Skip to main content

Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Thomas Biggs Harned Collection of the Library of Congress

Original finding aid completed by the Library of Congress; revised and expanded by The Walt Whitman Archive and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. Encoded Archival Description completed with the assistance of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the University of Nebraska Research Council, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.




Individual items at this repository

  • Whitman Archive Title: Miscellaneous Notes
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00622
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Undated, Miscellaneous notes or reminders
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: undated
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 4 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Notes Whitman took concerning ideas or suggestions for poems and other work (for example, "Mr. Goodfellow's suggestions for a pastoral poem"). These notes have no known relationship to Whitman's published work.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Gossip at Dusk
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00367
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Gossip at Dusk
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: undated
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 3 leaves, 4 x 14 to 20 x 12.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Drafts of lines entitled "Gossip at Dusk." The relationship to Whitman's published work is unknown.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Maize-Tassels
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00368
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Maize-Tassels
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: undated
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 14.5 x 13.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A draft of a poem entitled "Maize-Tassels." Written at the top of the manuscript is the note, "White Horse notes." The relationship of this manuscript to Whitman's published work is unknown.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [the strong right]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00369
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: The Strong Right Hand
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: undated
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 20.5 x 12.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A couple of trial lines for an unrealized poem, beginning "the strong right hand." These lines have no known relationship to Whitman's published work.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Light]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00370
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Untitled and Unidentified
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: undated
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A draft of lines beginning "Light/ Lives, water, light/ and darkness." These lines have no known relationship to Whitman's published work.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [all birth and growth]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00375
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Untitled and Unidentified
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: undated
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
  • Content: Two scraps of paper held together because of treatment by a collector or archivist. These lines have no known relationship to Whitman's published work.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Like the young eagle]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00371
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Untitled and Unidentified
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: undated
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 3 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
  • Content: Three scraps of paper held together with draft lines bearing an unknown relationship to Whitman's published work.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Poem incarnating the mind
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00346
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Notebooks, Before 1855
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: Before 1855
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 14 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28
  • Content: Edward Grier dates this notebook before 1855, based on the pronoun revisions from third person to first person and the notebook's similarity to Whitman's early "Talbot Wilson" notebook ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:102). Grier notes that a portion of this notebook (beginning "How spied the captain and sailors") describes the wreck of the ship San Francisco in January 1854 (1:108 n33). A note on one of the last pages of the notebook (surface 26) matches the plot of the first of four tales Whitman published as "Some Fact-Romances" in The Aristidean in 1845, so segments of the notebook may have been written as early as the 1840s. Lines from the notebook were used in "Song of Myself" and "A Song of the Rolling Earth," which appeared in the 1856 Leaves of Grass . Language and ideas from the notebook also appear to have contributed to other poems and prose, including "Miracles;" the preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass ; "The Sleepers," which first appeared as the fourth poem in the 1855 Leaves ; and "A Song of Joys," which appeared as "Poem of Joys" in the 1860 edition.

  • Whitman Archive Title: a schoolmaster
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04588
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Notebooks c. 1852?
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: Before or early in 1852
  • Genre: poetry, prose
  • Physical Description: 11 leaves, handwritten; print
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22
  • Content: The plot described in this notebook corresponds to Whitman's novel Life and Adventures of Jack Engle: An Auto-Biography , published serially in the New York Sunday Dispatch from March 14 to April 18, 1852. Two Tribune clippings pasted onto one of the pages of this notebook also are dated 1852. The writing in the notebook therefore probably dates to before or early in 1852. The name of the character "Covert" also appears in Whitman's story "Revenge and Requital; A Tale of a Murderer Escaped," first published in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review in July–August 1845, although the plot of that story bears only minor resemblance to the plot of Jack Engle . Covert, a villainous lawyer in both tales, may have been based on a man from Whitman's own experience. For more about this connection and the composition and publication of Jack Engle , see Zachary Turpin, "Introduction to Walt Whitman's 'Life and Adventures of Jack Engle,'" Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 34 (2017), 225–261. Whitman also copied two excerpts of poetry in this notebook (surface 19). The first poetic quotation comes from Robert Blair's poem "The Grave" (1743). The source of the second quotation is unknown. The note on the verso of what is represented here as the last page of this notebook is upside down, suggesting that Whitman may have begun writing from one direction in this notebook, then flipped it over and started writing in the other direction. The cover of the notebook is labeled "Note Book Walt Whitman 82" in a hand that is not Whitman's.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Other-Leaves]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04602
  • Box: 3
  • Folder: Undated, Notebook pages
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: 1845–1892
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
  • Content: Notes for a potential work concerning lines and processions, with the words "Other-Leaves/ Dust-and-Spray" at the top.

  • Whitman Archive Title: you know how
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00142
  • Box: 8
  • Folder: Notebooks, [Before 1855]
  • Series: Recovered Cardboard Butterfly and Notebooks, [1847]-[circa 1863-1864]
  • Date: 1855 or before
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 14 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28
  • Content: Because it comprises material that Whitman used in the first edition of Leaves of Grass , this notebook must date to sometime before mid-1855.Emory Holloway has posited several connections between passages in this notebook and specific lines in the 1855 edition. Although some of these connections are dubious, the notebook's series of drafts about the effects of music are clearly related to what ultimately became section 26 of "Song of Myself." See Emory Holloway, ed., The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1921), 2:83–86.

  • Whitman Archive Title: of these poems
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04600
  • Series: Recovered Cardboard Butterfly and Notebooks, [1847]-[circa 1863-1864]
  • Date: Between 1845 and 1860
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A prose manuscript fragment in which Whitman discusses a range of topics, including a discussion, in the third person, of a person who "demands reality in literature." It is unclear if Whitman is referring to himself or to somebody else. Based on the handwriting, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to the 1850s or earlier ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 4:1429). On the verso Whitman has copied two stanzas of English poet William Collins' "The Passions. An Ode for Music."

  • Whitman Archive Title: The analogy
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05176
  • Series: Recovered Cardboard Butterfly and Notebooks, [1847]-[circa 1863-1864]
  • Date: 1855 or earlier
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A manuscript that discusses, in gendered terms, the relationship between the soul and "physical matter," describing the former as male and the latter as female. Although Whitman frequently addresses issues relating to the soul in his poems, there is no direct conncetion between the manuscript and Whitman's published work. Based on the handwriting, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to 1855 or earlier ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:176).

  • Whitman Archive Title: For remember that behind all
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05334
  • Series: Recovered Cardboard Butterfly and Notebooks, [1847]-[circa 1863-1864]
  • Date: Between 1845 and 1860
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Edward Grier notes that this scrap contains ideas similar to those found in what would become section 4 of the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself." But Grier also indicates that the manuscript could be notes for a lecture that Whitman was planning ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 6:2047). In either case, the manuscript likely dates to the 1850s.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Talbot Wilson
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00141
  • Box: 8
  • Folder: Recovered Cardboard Butterfly and Notebooks, Notebooks, [1847], (80)
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: Between 1847 and 1854
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 66 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | 95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 | 100 | 101 | 102 | 103 | 104 | 105 | 106 | 107 | 108 | 109 | 110 | 111 | 112 | 113 | 114 | 115 | 116 | 117 | 118 | 119 | 120 | 121 | 122 | 123 | 124 | 125 | 126 | 127 | 128 | 129 | 130 | 131 | 132 | 133
  • Content: Early discussions of this notebook dated it in the 1840s, and the date associated with it in the Library of Congress finding aid is 1847. The cover of the notebook features a note calling it the "Earliest and Most Important Notebook of Walt Whitman." A note on leaf 27 recto includes the date April 19, 1847, and the year 1847 is listed again as part of a payment note on leaf 43 recto. More recently, however, scholars have argued that Whitman repurposed this notebook, and that most of the writing was more likely from 1853 to 1854, just before the publication of Leaves of Grass . Almost certainly Whitman began the notebook by keeping accounts, producing the figures that are still visible on some of the page stubs, and later returned to it to write the poetry and prose drafts. For further discussion of dating and the fascinating history of this notebook into the twentieth century, see Matt Miller, Collage of Myself: Walt Whitman and the Making of Leaves of Grass (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), 2–8. See also Andrew C. Higgins, "Wage Slavery and the Composition of Leaves of Grass : The Talbot Wilson Notebook," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 20:2 (Fall 2002), 53–77. Scholars have noted a relationship between this notebook and much of the prose and poetry that appeared in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass . See, for instance, Edward Grier, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 1:53–82. The notebook was lost when Grier published his transcription (based on microfilm). The notebook features an early (if not the earliest) example of Whitman using his characteristic long poetic lines, as well as the "generic or cosmic or transcendental 'I'" that appears in Leaves of Grass (Grier, 1:55).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [What cannot meet all]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05179
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Untitled and Unidentified
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: 1850-1890
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: The recto of this manuscript is a prose jotting with no known relationship to Whitman's published work. On the verso is a draft poem which is partially illegible. The language used here is similar to many poems by Whitman without being clearly linked to any particular poem.

  • Whitman Archive Title: his poem of the
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05619
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Untitled and Unidentified; Undated, on the American Idiom
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1860
  • Genre: poetry, prose
  • Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
  • Content: These two scraps once formed part of a larger leaf and contain a crossed-out section of prose that seems to be discussing the human form and its treatment in literature. The phrase "organs and acts," which begins on the first scrap and continues onto the second, is also found in the poem that would eventually be titled "Starting from Paumanok". The poem originally appeared as the first poem in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass , titled "Proto-leaf." It took its final title in the 1867 edition. On the reverse side is a manuscript (loc.05620) containing a draft of an unpublished piece of journalism or essay.

  • Whitman Archive Title: I say that Democracy
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05314
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Miscellaneous notes or reminders
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1856
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: The writing at the top of this manuscript bears some resemblance to this sentence from the preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass : "Great genius and the people of these states must never be demeaned to romances" (1855, p. ix). The language and topic also resemble those of Whitman's self-authored review of the 1855 Leaves of Grass , "Walt Whitman and His Poems," which was published in The United States Review in September, 1855. It was also one of several reviews printed separately and included in some copies of the 1855 edition. Edward Grier, in Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, notes that "the small writing suggests a date in the 1850s" (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 1:361.

  • Whitman Archive Title: List of serviceable
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05211
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Undated, on the American idiom
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1850-1856
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript contains a short "list of serviceable words from the French" (there are only two words listed: "surveillance" and "prestige").

  • Whitman Archive Title: And to the soul
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05175
  • Series: Recovered Cardboard Butterfly and Notebooks, [1847]-[circa 1863-1864]
  • Date: 1855 or earlier
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A manuscript containing what appear to be three separate prose entries, of varying length and subject matter. The first briefly discusses the soul, the second discusses paper money and the paying of clergymen and congressmen, and the third discusses horses whose eyesight is supposedly affected by the moon. There is no known connection between any of these fragments and Whitman's published work. Edward Grier notes that the paper matches that of a manuscript dated 1855 or earlier, suggesting a similar date for this manuscript ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:171).

  • Whitman Archive Title: In Nature all is so real
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05333
  • Series: Recovered Cardboard Butterfly and Notebooks, [1847]-[circa 1863-1864]
  • Date: 1850s
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A manuscript that contrasts the perfection of nature with the imperfection of "religions" and "creeds." There is no known connection between the manuscript and Whitman's published work. Based on the handwriting, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to the 1850s ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 6:2044).

  • Whitman Archive Title: A large, good-looking woman
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05544
  • Series: Recovered Cardboard Butterfly and Notebooks, [1847]-[circa 1863-1864]
  • Date: 1850s
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Edward Grier postulates that this manuscript was probably written in the 1850s. The identity of the "large, good-looking woman" and the source of the story about Tom Thumb are unknown, though Grier notes that Whitman interviewed P. T. Barnum in 1847, Thumb visited the Midwest with Barnum's circus after 1851, and Thumb made an 1854 appearance with the circus in Brooklyn. For further details, see Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 1:244. It is possible that this may have been draft fragments or notes toward intended pieces of fiction.

  • Whitman Archive Title: human feet, awaits us
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05625
  • Series: Recovered Cardboard Butterfly and Notebooks, [1847]-[circa 1863-1864]
  • Date: Before or early in 1855
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: The content of this manuscript, in which Whitman writes that true knowledge and experience do not come from books, is similar to material found in Whitman's early notebooks and in the first edition of Leaves of Grass. Based on this and the handwriting, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to before or early in 1855 ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:188).

  • Whitman Archive Title: for lect on Literature
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05629
  • Series: Recovered Cardboard Butterfly and Notebooks, [1847]-[circa 1863-1864]
  • Date: 1850s or 1860s
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Whitman's heading indicates that these brief notes were intended for a lecture on "Literature" or "Democracy." The notes contain only two short lines, both about "literary men." Based on the handwriting, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to the 1850s ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 4:1591). This date can be supported by Whitman's interest in oratory and goal of becoming a lecturer in the 1850s, though he also maintained these interests in the 1860s. He explained in a letter to his mother of June 9, 1863: "I think something of commencing a series of lectures & readings &c. through different cities of the north, to supply myself with funds for my Hospital & Soldiers visits." Whitman's meditation on literature and its relation to "Democracy" in this manuscript may have contributed to his essay "Democracy," which appeared in the Galaxy in 1867 and was later incorporated into Democratic Vistas (1871).

  • Whitman Archive Title: Names or terms
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05640
  • Series: Recovered Cardboard Butterfly and Notebooks, [1847]-[circa 1863-1864]
  • Date: 1850s
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A manuscript in which Whitman discusses false meanings being applied to words, "as the term calling the American aborigines Indians ." Based on the handwriting, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to the 1850s ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 5:1664).

  • Whitman Archive Title: truly what is commonest
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05641
  • Series: Recovered Cardboard Butterfly and Notebooks, [1847]-[circa 1863-1864]
  • Date: Before or early in 1855
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: The words that appear near the beginning of this scrap are similar to a line from "Song of Myself," in which Whitman writes "What is commonest and cheapest and nearest and easiest is Me." Thus, it is likely that this manuscript dates from before or early in 1855.

  • Whitman Archive Title: The regular old followers
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00024
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Notebooks c. 1854–1855
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: Between 1853 and 1855
  • Genre: poetry, prose
  • Physical Description: 12 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24
  • Content: Whitman likely wrote the building specifications on what is presented here as the last leaf of this notebook first, and then flipped the notebook over and wrote notes from the other direction. References to the San Francisco can be dated to sometime after January 1854. The cover of the notebook is labeled "Note Book Walt Whitman" in a hand that is not Whitman's. Selections and subjects from this notebook were used in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass , including phrases from the poems that would later be titled "Song of Myself" and "Song of the Answerer." See Edward Grier, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 1:113–117. Lines in this manuscript correspond to a line from the manuscript poem, unpublished in Whitman's lifetime, titled "Pictures": "And now a merry recruiter passes, with fife and drum, seeking who will join his troop." The first several lines of the poem (not including this line) were revised and published in The American in October 1880 as "My Picture-Gallery," a poem later included in Leaves of Grass as part of the "Autumn Rivulets" cluster (1881, p. 310).

  • Whitman Archive Title: The idea of reconciliation
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05180
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: [Before 1882], "The Tramp and Strike Questions"
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: Between 1854 and 1860
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A version of the second paragraph of this manuscript appears toward the end of the preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass >: "No great literature nor any like style of behaviour or oratory or social intercourse or household arrangements or public institutions or the treatment by bosses of employed people, nor executive detail or detail of the army or navy, nor spirit of legislation or courts or police or tuition or architecture or songs or amusements or the costumes of young men, can long elude the jealous and passionate instinct of American standards" (xii). Edward Grier dates the manuscript after 1857 because it is written on the reverse of a City of Williamsburgh tax form ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:400). Scholars, following Fredson Bowers, have generally assumed that Whitman used the Williamsburgh tax forms from 1857 to 1860, while he was working at the Brooklyn Daily Times . The city of Williamsburgh was incorporated with Brooklyn effective January 1855, so the forms would have been obsolete after that date ( Whitman's Manuscripts: Leaves of Grass [1860] [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955], xli–xliii). Most of the manuscripts Whitman wrote on the tax forms can be dated to the late 1850s. Bowers also notes, however, that Whitman may have used the forms over a considerable span of time, and that "it is not impossible that Whitman had picked up these tax forms for scrap paper at Rome Brothers at some unknown date in 1854 or early 1855, or later" (xliii). At least two of the tax forms Whitman used were dated 1854 (see, for instance, "Vast national tracts"), but as Grier points out, this may not correspond to the date of Whitman's writing (5:1946). Whitman may have found a stack of obsolete Williamsburgh forms in 1857 that included discarded draft forms dated earlier. Although this manuscript matches wording in the preface to the 1855 edition, Whitman copied out sections of the preface in several later manuscripts, and the revision from "much longer" to "permanently" suggests that here Whitman may have been revising away from the preface version here as well. The manuscript is thus difficult to date conclusively, but it was almost certainly written after 1854 and probably before 1860.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Autobiographical Data
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05935
  • Box: 6
  • Folder: Notebooks [before 1855]
  • Series: Photocopies
  • Date: Between 1848 and 1856
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 10 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
  • Content: Photostats, made for William L. Finkel sometime "prior to 1942," of a notebook then in the collection but lost during World War II. Partial transcriptions, done by Emory Holloway and Clifton Furness in the 1920s, indicate that the photostats, which show sixteen full pages and portions of four others, are an incomplete representation of the original. Neither the photostats nor extant transcriptions bear any definitive evidence for dating the notebook, but scholars have generally agreed that Whitman must have written its contents around the time of the publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855. Ed Folsom has noted a connection between a passage shown on the right side of the fourth image and the account of the "mash'd fireman" in "Song of Myself." See Folsom, "Erasing Race: The Lost Black Presence in Whitman's Manuscripts," in Whitman Noir: Black America and the Good Gray Poet (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014), 3–31.

  • Whitman Archive Title: women
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05589
  • Box: 7
  • Folder: Photocopies Notebooks [before 1855]
  • Series: Supplementary Papers
  • Date: Between about 1854 and 1860
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 31 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61
  • Content: This notebook, now lost, contains much draft material used in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass , in addition to a few images and phrasings that Whitman used in the second (1856) and third (1860) editions. As the folder title indicates, the notebook is currently represented by photocopied images of each page derived, apparently, from a microfilm of the original that was made in the 1930s prior to the notebook's disappearance from the collection during World War II. As Floyd Stovall has noted, the few datable references in this notebook (e.g., the fighting at Sebastopol during the Crimean War) are to events from about 1853 to late 1854, shortly before the first publication of Leaves of Grass . See Stovall, "Dating Whitman's Early Notebooks," Studies in Bibliography 24 (1971), 197–204. See also Edward Grier, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 1:138–155. Surfaces 9, 10, 54, and 55 bear passages that probably contributed to the first poem of the 1855 edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself," and other material, on surfaces 26, 46, 51, 54, and 58, is clearly linked to the evolution of that poem. A passage on surface 23 is also perhaps related to its development. Surfaces 11 and 12 both have material probably used as fodder for the poem "Song of the Answerer," first published as the seventh poem in the 1855 Leaves. A brief passage on surface 12 possibly contributed to the poem first published in 1860 as the fourth of the "Chants Democratic" and later retitled "Our Old Feuillage." Surfaces 13 and 46 contain drafts of passages used in the second poem of 1855, later titled "A Song for Occupations." Material on surfaces 24 and 47 probably also contributed to this poem. Passages on surfaces 17, 18, 40, 42, and 45 are likely early drafts toward lines used in "Poem of the Sayers of the Words of the Earth" (1856), which later became "A Song of the Rolling Earth." Surface 18 also bears writing probably related to the twelfth and final poem of the 1855 Leaves, later titled "Faces." On surfaces 18, 24, and 51 are lines that might represent draft material toward "I Sing the Body Electric" (first published as the fifth poem of the 1855 Leaves ). Other passages, on surfaces 47 and 55, are likely related to that poem; those on surfaces 36, 37, 44, 45, and 47 are certainly related. Ideas and images written on surfaces 20 and 46 are likely related to the poem "Song of the Open Road," which first appeared as "Poem of the Road," and a passage on surface 24 may also be related. Two passages on surface 21 were used in the tenth poem of the 1855 Leaves of Grass, later titled "There Was a Child Went Forth." Surface 22 contains writing probably used in "Sun-Down Poem" (1856), titled "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" in later editions. Some of the writing on surface 24 might also have contributed to the development of that poem. Another passage on surface 22, as well as passages on surfaces 26, 47, and 60, are possibly related to the 1855 Preface. A different passage on surface 60 is clearly related to the Preface, and a passage on surface 45 is likely related to it. Two of the draft lines of poetry on surface 31 were used in the untitled third poem of the "Debris" cluster in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. This poem was retitled "Leaflets" in 1867 and dropped from subsequent editions. The writing on surface 41 contributed to the 1856 "Poem of Salutation," which was eventually titled "Salut au Monde!" The jotting at the top of surface 43 is also likely connected to this poem.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Vast national tracts
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05354
  • Series: Recovered Cardboard Butterfly and Notebooks, [1847]-[circa 1863-1864]
  • Date: Between 1854 and 1860
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
  • Content: The first manuscript leaf is written on the back of a City of Williamsburgh tax form, filled out and dated 1854. The second leaf is written on the back of a Brooklyn election form, which includes the printed digits "185" but has not been filled out with the specific year. Scholars, following Fredson Bowers, have generally assumed that Whitman used the Williamsburgh tax forms from 1857 to 1860, while he was working at the Brooklyn Daily Times . The city of Williamsburgh was incorporated with Brooklyn effective January 1855, so the forms would have been obsolete after that date ( Whitman's Manuscripts: Leaves of Grass [1860] [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955], xli–xliii). Most of the manuscripts Whitman wrote on the tax forms can be dated to the late 1850s. Bowers also notes, however, that Whitman may have used the forms over a considerable span of time, and that "it is not impossible that Whitman had picked up these tax forms for scrap paper at Rome Brothers at some unknown date in 1854 or early 1855, or later" (xliii). As Edward Grier points out, the date on the tax forms may not correspond to the date of Whitman's writing ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 5:1946). Whitman may have found a stack of obsolete Williamsburgh forms in 1857 that included discarded draft forms dated earlier. Whitman saw something of the plains on his journey to and from New Orleans in 1848, and his most extensive trip through the west was to Denver in 1879, but he collected newspaper articles about the west throughout the 1850s, 60s, and 70s (Ed Folsom, "Walt Whitman and the Prairies," Mickle Street Review 17/18 [2005]). The manuscript is thus difficult to date conclusively, but it was almost certainly written after 1854 and probably before 1860.

  • Whitman Archive Title: The appearance
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05302
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Spectacle Inside the Opera House
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: 1890-1891
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 3 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
  • Content: This item appears to be a fragmentary, earlier draft of "A Visit to the Opera," a manuscript article now at Huntington Library in San Marino, California. No published version of the article has been found, though both manuscripts bear some similarities with a piece that Whitman published in Life Illustrated on November 10, 1855, entitled "The Opera." Edward Grier, in his discussion of these and other related manuscripts, speculates that the manuscripts represent a revision of the published article, which Whitman perhaps submitted for publication sometime after late 1858. (See Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984] 1:388-397.)

  • Whitman Archive Title: The Amadis of Gaul
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05546
  • Box: 3
  • Folder: Undated
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: 1855-1871
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 11 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22
  • Content: These notes served as background for Whitman's discussion of current popular American literature in Democratic Vistas (1871), where he speculates that it is an inheritance of "the Amadises and Palmerins."

  • Whitman Archive Title: Henry VII died 1509
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05548
  • Box: 3
  • Folder: Undated
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: 1855-1882
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 3 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
  • Content: The brutality of the reign of Henry VIII and the English Reformation is evident in the section of Specimen Days and Collect (1882-1883) entitled "Origins of Attempted Secession."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [How will it do for figure?]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00372
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: on slavery
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: about 1856
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Notes and draft lines of a work concerning slavery. The relationship of these lines to Whitman's published work is unknown. On the verso is a page from the November, 1856 Christian Examiner .

  • Whitman Archive Title: paths of rhyme
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05618
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Untitled and Unidentified
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: 1857-1881
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: The sentiments about the poet and versification are present in the revised "Preface, 1855, to first issue of 'Leaves of Grass,'" published in Specimen Days & Collect (1882-1883). Grier dates this scrap from 1857, and the verso has a printed date of 185-.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Notebook Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05080
  • Box: 2-3
  • Folder: New York City notebook
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: 1857-1861
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 22 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44
  • Content: Two surfaces (number 27 and 29) of this manuscript notebook contain notes on the Old Military Garden in New York City that Whitman used for the article "An Old Brooklyn Landmark Going," published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on 10 October 1861, page 2. For the full transcription and images of the article, see http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/periodical/journalism/tei/per.00207.html

  • Whitman Archive Title: Notebook Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00348
  • Box: 2-3
  • Folder: New York City notebook
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: 1857-1862
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 32 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64
  • Content: This notebook includes a draft of lines written about Pfaff's, a popular mid-nineteenth century Bohemian spot (see surfaces 11 through 18). The lines were edited and published posthumously as "The Two Vaults." This notebook also contains the notes (see surfaces 23 to 44 and 47 to 59) about the Jamaica Presbyterian bicentennial which were used by Whitman in the article "Important Ecclesiastical Gathering at Jamaica, L.I." published in the Brooklyn City News in January 1862.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Notebook, 1860-1861
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00029
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Notebooks, 1860-1861
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: 1860-1861
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 61 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | 95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 | 100 | 101 | 102 | 103 | 104 | 105 | 106 | 107 | 108 | 109 | 110 | 111 | 112 | 113 | 114 | 115 | 116 | 117 | 118
  • Content: An early notebook with several notes for poem ideas, trial lines, addresses, and drawings. Material in this notebook relates to poems ultimately titled "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," "By Blue Ontario's Shore," "The City Dead-House," and "Chanting the Square Deific." Some of the trial verses in this notebook were published posthumously as "[I Stand and Look]," "Ship of Libertad," and "Of My Poems." Within the notebook is also a poem draft that Whitman has titled called "The Incomplete."

  • Whitman Archive Title: Note Book
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04605
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: [1860], Boston notebook
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: 1860
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 34 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56
  • Content: A notebook from Whitman's trip to Boston in March through May of 1860. While most of the notebook is devoted to names, addresses, and notes from his visit, the first two leaves (surfaces 3 and 4) contain notes related to the printing of the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass , which he was in Boston to oversee. The printing notes refer to possible ornamentations for specific pages of Leaves and reference other books as examples of possible ornamentation and typography. Edward Grier provides information about the specific books that Whitman mentions, noting similarities between them and Leaves ( Notebook and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984] 1:419-421). Images of blank versos for several of the pages are currently unavailable.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Life light and
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04601
  • Box: 3
  • Folder: Notebook pages
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: 1860-1867
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A manuscript that contains various poetic lines. The line on the second leaf that describes "the Steamship . . . and the trailing pennant of smoke" was incorporated, in a slightly altered form, into the 1867 version of the poem that would eventually be titled "Song of Myself." The line was retained in all subsequent versions of the poem. The connection of the rest of the lines to Whitman's published work is unknown. The versos of both leaves are currently unavailable.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [O a new song]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00103
  • Box: 4
  • Folder: Newspaper Clippings on the Civil War
  • Series: Newspaper Clippings on the Civil War
  • Date: about 1861
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten; printed
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3
  • Content: A manuscript fragment containing the first two partial lines of the poem "Song of the Banner at Daybreak" first published in 1861 as "Banner at day-Break". The fragment has been pasted to a larger sheet making the verso unavailable.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Surgeons operating]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00080
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: A March in the Ranks Hard Prest
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1865
  • Genre: poetry, prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 21 cm x 16.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A clean, late draft of lines published in the poem "A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown," first published in 1865. On the verso are prose notes about various corps of Civil War soldiers.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Voltaire's readable
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05315
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Miscellaneous notes or reminders
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1860-1888
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This scrap can be linked to the article "George Fox and Shakspere" in the section entitled "Elias Hicks" in November Boughs , published 1888. Whitman is referring to a translation of Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary (Boston: J. P. Mendum, 1852), where the passage on pages 197-198 clearly discusses Quakers or "primitives."

  • Whitman Archive Title: Brooklyn & Washington Notebook
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04604
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: [1860-1864], Brooklyn and Washington notebook
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: 1860-1875
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 33 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64
  • Content: This notebook contains, among other things, miscellaneous notes on soldiers met by Whitman in his visits to the hospitals. The name of soldier Reuben Farwell appears twice (on surface number six and surface number ten) and that of soldier Bethuel Smith appears once (on surface number ten). Whitman mentions these two soldiers in "Typical Soldiers," which first appeared in the "Notes" section of Memoranda During the War (1875–1876), later revised for Specimen Days & Collect (1882–1883) and reprinted in Complete Prose Works (1892). Notes addressing themes for potential poems appear in this notebook as well (see surfaces 32 through 36). The relationship of these notes to Whitman's published poetry is unknown.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Notebook, 1868-1870
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00350
  • Box: 6
  • Folder: Notebook, 1868-1870
  • Series: Lincoln Material
  • Date: about 1868-1870
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 8 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16
  • Content: A notebook (probably bound by someone other than Whitman), containing some draft lines (one titled "Epictetus," another "After an Extract from Heine's Diary") that bear an unknown relationship to Whitman's published work. Also included are several notes that scholars have identified as autobiographical comments on Whitman's relationship with Peter Doyle.

  • Whitman Archive Title: For an idea
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00070
  • Box: 6
  • Folder: Lincoln Material Poetry Manuscripts "The Crusades" [1869?]
  • Series: Lincoln Material
  • Date: about 1868-1870
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: One of several manuscripts in which Whitman records and develops ideas for a poem that never emerged about the crusades. In this manuscript, Whitman relates "the Crusades" and "our own great war" through the observation that great revolutions have "been mainly for an idea." Whitman mentions the crusades specifically in both his prose works Specimen Days & Collect (1882–1883) and Democratic Vistas (1871), though a direct link between these manuscript notes and any of his published works is unclear. The verso contains part of a cancelled letter about the steamer Georgia between Charles Francis Adams, Minister to England during the Civil War, and Earl Russell, British Foreign Minister. Other dated materials containing notes on the crusades suggest this manuscript was likely composed around 1869.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Crusades
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00066
  • Box: 6
  • Folder: Lincoln Material Poetry Manuscripts "The Crusades" [1869?]
  • Series: Lincoln Material
  • Date: about 1868-1870
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript bears trial lines for a poem attempting to link the crusades to America. While other manuscripts and published works share similarities in topic and idea, a direct link to any published document is unknown. The verso contains a cancelled list of references to letters in the House Executive Documents, 38th Cong. which correspond to several individual documents transcribed on the cancelled versos of other crusade manuscripts also in the Harned collection. Other dated materials containing notes on the crusades suggest this manuscript was likely composed around 1869.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [The number of the Crusades is]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00071
  • Box: 6
  • Folder: Lincoln Material Poetry Manuscripts "The Crusades" [1869?]
  • Series: Lincoln Material
  • Date: about 1868-1870
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: One of several manuscripts in which Whitman records and develops ideas for a poem that never emerged about the crusades. This manuscript contains notes about the time periods and divides between the crusades. While other manuscripts and published works share similarities in topic and idea, a direct link is unknown. The verso contains part of a cancelled letter about the steamer Georgia between Charles Francis Adams, Minister to England during the Civil War, and Earl Russell, British Foreign Minister. Other dated materials containing notes on the crusades suggest this manuscript was likely composed around 1869.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Dr. L B Russell
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05449
  • Box: 2-3
  • Folder: Diary
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: 1862-1863
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 43 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87
  • Content: This manuscript notebook contains a series of diary entries from December 1862 to December 1863. In the entries, Whitman keeps track of family correspondence and of how he spent his days. He often mentions visiting wounded and dying soldiers in Washington military hospitals. While the whole notebook adds context to Whitman's writings about the Civil War, there are two entries that can be directly linked to specific passages in Whitman's published work. The entry from Monday, May 4th, 1863 (surface 12) mentions "4th Hooker's battles around Fredericksburg to night the wounded begin to arrive from Hooker's command." This passage contributes to the section "The Wounded from Chancellorsville" published in Specimen Days & Collect (1882-1883) and retained in Complete Prose Works (1892). The entry from Wednesday, September 16th, 1863 (surface number thirty-one), reporting the death of Lorenzo Strong, contributes to "Last of the War Cases" published in November Boughs (1888) and later retained in Complete Prose Works (1892).

  • Whitman Archive Title: The incident of the blowing up
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05317
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Miscellaneous notes or reminders
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1862
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This scrap contains a passage that is referenced in Whitman's column "Brooklyniana" published in the Brooklyn Standard on February 8, 1862. The column is reproduced here .

  • Whitman Archive Title: Walt Whitman. 1862.
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00026
  • Box: 8
  • Folder: [1862-1863]
  • Series: Recovered Cardboard Butterfly and Notebooks, [1847]-[circa 1863-1864]
  • Date: 1862-1863
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 102 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | 95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 | 100 | 101 | 102 | 103 | 104 | 105 | 106 | 107 | 108 | 109 | 110 | 111 | 112 | 113 | 114 | 115 | 116 | 117 | 118 | 119 | 120 | 121 | 122 | 123 | 124 | 125 | 126 | 127 | 128 | 129 | 130 | 131 | 132 | 133 | 134 | 135 | 136 | 137 | 138 | 139 | 140 | 141 | 142 | 143 | 144 | 145 | 146 | 147 | 148 | 149 | 150 | 151 | 152 | 153 | 154 | 155 | 156 | 157 | 158 | 159 | 160 | 161 | 162 | 163 | 164 | 165 | 166 | 167 | 168 | 169 | 170 | 171 | 172 | 173 | 174 | 175 | 176 | 177 | 178 | 179 | 180 | 181 | 182 | 183 | 184 | 185 | 186 | 187 | 188 | 189 | 190 | 191 | 192 | 193 | 194 | 195 | 196 | 197 | 198 | 199 | 200 | 201 | 202 | 203 | 204 | 205
  • Content: A Civil-War-era notebook containing entries written in 1862 and 1863 in both New York and Washington, D.C. Many of the early leaves contain names, addresses, and descriptions of acquaintances in New York. Beginning roughly halfway through the notebook, the entries focus on Whitman's experiences in and around Washington, visiting hospital camps and battle-fields. Several of the entries contributed to published pieces of poetry or prose. Surface 8 bears a clipping and is represented here by two images (8 and 9). Surface 39 (image 40) mentions the "Apollo Summer Garden," which Whitman wrote about in a New York Leader column of 19 April 1862 entitled "City Photographs—No. V." Surfaces 83 and 85 (images 84 and 86) contain notes that constitute a draft of a portion of the seventh installment of the "City Photographs" series on 17 May 1862 (the section titled "Lindmuller's"). Surface 47 (image 48) also contains a reference to "Lindenmuller's Halle," including its street address. Surfaces 67 and 69 (images 66 and 68) are early drafts of "The City Dead-House," a poem that first appeared in the 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass . On surface 89 (image 90) Whitman is drafting the title of "By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame," a poem which first appeared as part of Drum-Taps (1865). Surface 113 (image 114) contains notes about a pile of amputated limbs that contributed to the section of Specimen Days (1882–1883) describing Whitman's visit to an army camp hospital at Falmouth, Virginia, in December 1862, titled "Down at the Front." This section had first appeared in the New York Times on 11 December 1864 in a piece entitled "Our Wounded and Sick Soldiers" and was later reprinted in the New York Weekly Graphic (14 February 1874) and Memoranda During the War (1875–1876). Surface 138 (image 139) contains a prose passage that contributed to the poem "A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Grey and Dim," first published in Drum-Taps (1865). Surface 143 (image 144) contains a draft of "The Veteran's Vision," which also first appeared as part of Drum-Taps and was later re-titled "The Artilleryman's Vision." Surface 153 (image 154) contains notes that likely contributed to the poem eventually titled "One's-Self I Sing" (first published, in a different form, as the "Inscription" to the 1867 edition of Leaves ). The top half of surface 183 (image 184) contains early draft lines of "A Noiseless, Patient Spider," which first appeared as a section of the poem "Whispers of Heavenly Death" in The Broadway, A London Magazine in October 1868 before being published as its own poem in Passage to India (1871). Surfaces 194 and 195 (images 195 and 196) contain lines that contributed to the poem ultimately titled "Quicksand Years." The poem was first published as "Quicksand Years That Whirl Me I Know Not Whither" in Drum-Taps (1865).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Collected in]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.06101
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Notebooks
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: 1863-1867
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
  • Content: The seventh surface of this manuscript notebook contains a passage that will appear, with revisions, in the article "Democracy"published in the Galaxy (December 1867). The passage will also appear in Democratic Vistas (1871) and retained in Democratic Vistas and Other Papers (1888) and in Democratic Vistas published within Complete Prose Works (1892).

  • Whitman Archive Title: Hospital notebook
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05356
  • Box: 3
  • Folder: Washington & Brooklyn hospital notebook
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: 1863-1864
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 49 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | 95 | 96 | 97 | 98
  • Content: A handmade notebook (now disbound) containing mostly names and addresses of soldiers and brief accounts of the hospital camps and battlefields. Two of the soldiers' names, Rueben Farwell and Bethuel Smith, appear in "Typical Soldiers," a section of Specimen Days (1882-1883). The piece was reprinted in Complete Prose Works (1892).

  • Whitman Archive Title: For Note
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.01552
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: [1865 or before], war and hospital notes and memoranda
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1863-1875
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
  • Content: In this manuscript, entitled "For Note," Whitman seems to be drafting an introductory note for Memoranda During the War , published in 1875-1876. Although the note does not appear verbatim in Memoranda , some passages of this manuscript bear resemblance to the introductory paragraphs in which Whitman reflects on the impossibility of writing a complete and accurate history of the war and offers the rationale for his decision to record a "few glimpses" of "the Hospital part of the drama from '61 to '65."

  • Whitman Archive Title: For War Memoranda
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.01553
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: [1865 or before], war and hospital notes and memoranda
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1863-1875
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten; printed
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript contains preparatory material for Memoranda During the War , published in 1875-1876. (Although the note does not appear verbatim in Memoranda , the fact that Whitman titles the manuscript "for war memoranda note," using a different pen, clearly indicates that he thought of using the note for the book.) On the verso is a draft of the section titled "An Afternoon Scene" published in Specimen Days & Collect , see the entry for loc.06100.

  • Whitman Archive Title: ? the sky
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.06100
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: [1865 or before], war and hospital notes and memoranda
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1863-1881
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript contains a draft of the section titled "An Afternoon Scene" published in Specimen Days & Collect (1882-1883) and later retained in Complete Prose Works (1892). On the verso is preparatory material for Memoranda During the War , see the entry for loc.01553.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Make a conclusion
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.01554
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: [1865 or before], war and hospital notes and memoranda
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1863-1875
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript contains a short note with two war scenes (the homeward bound Armies at Washington and the disbanding, and the first onset and alarm) that Whitman hypothesized to use as a conclusion and an opening for Memoranda During the War (1875-1876). The scenes did not appear in these locations, but were used, still in Memoranda , in the section titled "The Ensuing Three Months—The National Uprising and Volunteering." The scenes were also included within "National Uprising and Volunteering" published in Specimen Days & Collect (1882-1883) and later retained in Complete Prose Works (1892).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [scene in the woods on]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00484
  • Box: 8
  • Folder: Notebooks, [circa 1863–1864], Washington hospital notebook
  • Series: Recovered Cardboard Butterfly and Notebooks, [1847]-[circa 1863-1864]
  • Date: 1863–1864
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 24 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48
  • Content: A small, homemade notebook which contains, among other notes, an account of the retreat following the battle of White Oaks Church, as told to Whitman by Milton Roberts. Whitman used many of the scences from Roberts's story in the poem, "A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown," first published in Drum-Taps (1865). Adam Bradford writes about this notebook and its connection to "A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown"; see "Re-Collecting Soldiers: Walt Whitman and the Appreciation of Human Value," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 27.3 (Winter 2010), 127-52.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Out of A Hundred Years
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00079
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: after 1865
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A scrap of paper with an underlined title written across the top reading "Out of A Hundred Years" and subtitled "in Prose and Verse Melanged." In the top margin is written "?Vistas."

  • Whitman Archive Title: In mem. of A.L.
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.07040
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Abraham Lincoln
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: 1865
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: The notes contained in this manuscript, significantly titled "In Mem. of A.L." ("In Memory of Abraham Lincoln") are focused on the sense of collective grieving for the death of Lincoln, a founding theme for the poem "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," initially published in Sequel to Drum Taps , issued by Gibson Brothers in the fall of 1865 and bound with Drum Taps . The poem made its first appearance in the text of Leaves of Grass in 1867.

  • Whitman Archive Title: For funeral piece
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.07041
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Abraham Lincoln
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: 1865
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript, significantly titled "For Funeral piece A.L." ("For Funeral piece A.L."), is composed of a short note which can be read as a general outline of the poem "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," followed by some lines of poetry that bear resemblance with section eleven of the same poem. The poem was initially published in Sequel to Drum Taps , issued by Gibson Brothers in the fall of 1865 and bound with Drum Taps . The poem made its first appearance in the text of Leaves of Grass in 1867.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Farewell my brethren]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00373
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: war and hospital notes and memoranda
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: about 1873
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: On the recto is a cancelled draft of lines from "Song of the Redwood Tree," first published in 1873. On the verso is a meditation on the war, of which the connection to Whitman's published work is unknown.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Blacks]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00374
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: war and hospital notes and memoranda
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: about 1873
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Held together with two other scraps of paper is a note regarding the skill of black "pilots in the US ships" during the attack on Charleston. The relationship of this manuscript to Whitman's published works is unclear.

  • Whitman Archive Title: principal personages of the
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.07417
  • Box: 6
  • Folder: Lincoln Material Poetry Manuscripts "The Crusades" [1869?]
  • Series: Lincoln Material
  • Date: Around 1869
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: One of a number of manuscripts in which Whitman records and develops ideas for a poem that never emerged about the Crusades. In this particular manuscript, Whitman lists figures such as "Peter the Hermit" and "The Popes." While Whitman mentions the Crusades specifically in both his prose works Specimen Days & Collect (1882–1883) and Democratic Vistas (1871), a direct link between these manuscript notes and any of his published works is unclear. Other dated materials containing notes on the Crusades suggest this manuscript was likely composed around 1869. The verso contains part of a cancelled letter between Charles Francis Adams, Minister to England during the Civil War, and Earl Russell, British Foreign Minister, regarding the Confederate steamer Georgia , which Whitman would have had to copy from another published document.

  • Whitman Archive Title: July 30 1865
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.02818
  • Box: 3
  • Folder: Notebook pages [1865]
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: 30 July 1865
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
  • Content: Two manuscript leaves containing notes from Whitman's Civil War hospital visits. These particular notes would later be included in "Army Hospitals and Cases: Memoranda at the Time, 1863-66," published in Century Magazine in October 1888. The piece would later be revised and included in November Boughs as "Last of the War Cases."

  • Whitman Archive Title: Lucretius. De Rerum Natura
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05547
  • Box: 3
  • Folder: Lucretius
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: 1866-1871
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 5 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
  • Content: These notes, based on a reading of Rev. John Selby Watson's 1851 translation Lucretius on the Nature of Things, contributed to a short passage on the Roman poet Lucretius in Democratic Vistas (1871), which was reprinted in Complete Prose Works (1892).

  • Whitman Archive Title: Go into the subject
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05620
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Undated, on the American Idiom; Untitled and Unidentified
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: Between 1867 and 1885
  • Genre: poetry, prose
  • Physical Description: 5 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
  • Content: The rectos of these several leaves form what seems to be a piece of journalism or an essay about words, language, and names. No known publication of the piece has been found, but it is possible that it is related to Whitman's 1885 essay "Slang in America." At one point in the planning of that essay Whitman considered splitting the material he had been collecting into two articles, to be called "Words, words, words" and "Names & Slang in America" (see Edward Grier, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 5:1674). At the top of this manuscript Whitman has written the heading "words," as well as the title "About Names," making it unclear which, if either, of the two articles this may have been intended for. What's more, the language, tone, and content of this manuscript are nothing like those of "Slang in America," so any connection between the two is oblique. The text on the recto of the second leaf shown here (image 3) was likely intended to come either between leaves one and three, or be inserted as the opening lines of the essay. Leaves one and three used to form part of the same sheet of paper, and on the verso is another, unrelated scrap of prose (loc.05619). Leaves four and five also used to form part of the same sheet of paper (loc.05224), and on the verso is an outline for the three essays, only two of which were actually published as separate articles, that Whitman eventually combined to form the larger work entitled Democratic Vistas . As Whitman has written on the manuscript that the "Democracy" article was "already published," the date of the Democratic Vistas plan was likely written between December 1867 (when "Democracy" appeared in Galaxy ) and May 1868 (when Personalism was published). This means that the essay about names and language on the rectos was written after that date. A line on the recto of the third leaf (image 5) contains the phrase "commonest & cheapest & nearest," which had first appeared in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass , in the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself". This is one of only a few known examples of Whitman recycling lines of poetry in later prose.

  • Whitman Archive Title: 1st Democracy
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05224
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Undated, on the American Idiom
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: Between December 1867 and May 1868
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
  • Content: These two leaves used to form part of the same sheet of paper, and form an outline for the three essays—only two of which were actually published as separate articles—that Whitman eventually combined to form the larger work entitled Democratic Vistas . As Whitman has written on the manuscript that the "Democracy" article was "already published," the date of its composition is likely between December 1867 (when "Democracy" appeared in Galaxy ) and May 1868 (when Personalism was published). On the reverse of the leaves is a portion of un unpublished prose essay (loc.05620).

  • Whitman Archive Title: from the traditional commencement
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.02806
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Memoranda (Old and New) of Camden
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: 1868-1871
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: The note in this manuscript bears resemblance to the general theme of the poem "Passage to India," which was published in the 1871 edition of Leaves of Grass , and was retained in all the subsequent editions.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Allude to the Suez
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05312
  • Box: 1-2
  • Folder: Miscellaneous notes or reminders
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1869-1871
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript contains a short reminder about alluding to the Suez Canal. The Suez Canal would appear for the first time in Whitman's poetry in "Passage to India", published in the 1871 edition of Leaves of Grass , and the reference was retained thereafter.

  • Whitman Archive Title: America to the Old World Bards
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04599
  • Box: 3
  • Folder: Notebook pages
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: 1870-1891
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 3 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
  • Content: A manuscript containing poetic lines that eventually led to the poem "Old Chants," first published in the New York publication Truth on 19 March 1891 and was later reprinted in Good-Bye My Fancy (1891). "Nat Bloom," the name that appears on the recto of the third leaf, was a New York City acquaintance of Whitman from as late as the 1870s, according to Edward Grier ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984] 4: 1405). If that is true, then this constitutes a very early draft of "Old Chants".

  • Whitman Archive Title: Leave-taking Words
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00078
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: 1870–1876
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 23.5 x 13.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: The page appears to be a draft of a title page for a manuscript titled "Leave-taking Words" or "Last Ripples (A Prelude to Passage to India)." At the bottom of the page are four lines from the end of "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," first published as "A Child's Reminiscence" in 1859. The lines from the poem are cleanly written, suggesting that they were meant to serve as an epigraph for Whitman's manuscript. "Passage to India" was published first in 1871. On the verso is a draft of a stanza of "Eidólons," first published in 1876. The verso also contains prose comments on the war, of which the connection to Whitman's published works is unknown.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Again with latest breath]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00081
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Prayer of Columbus
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1874
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 16 cm x 13.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Early draft of lines contributing to "Prayer of Columbus," first published in 1874. On the verso is a draft of Whitman's prose introduction to the poem.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Sands Drifted]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04180
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Drift Sands
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1879-1882
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6 x 14 to 20.5 x 16.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial titles and notes, including "Sands Drifted" and "Sands Drifted on the Shores of Sixty Years."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Resumés]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04181
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Drift Sands
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1879-1882
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6 x 14 to 20.5 x 16.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial titles and notes, including "Sands & Drift at Sixty-Three."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [? Songs]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04182
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Drift Sands
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1879-1882
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6 x 14 to 20.5 x 16.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial titles and notes, including "Sands at Sixty-Three" and "Sands & Spray at 61."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Names]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04184
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Drift Sands
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1879-1882
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6 x 14 to 20.5 x 16.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial titles and notes, including "Noon & Sundown Songs" and "Sands on the Shores of 60 & after."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Sands on the Shores of my 64th year]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04185
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Drift Sands
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1883
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6 x 14 to 20.5 x 16.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial titles and notes, including "Sands on the Shores of my 64th year."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Sands & Drift]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04224
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Drift Sands
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1879-1883
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6 x 14 to 20.5 x 16.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial titles and notes, including "Shore Drift Sands at Sixty-One" and "Sands at 64."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Shore Drift Sands at Sixty-One]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04225
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Drift Sands
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1880
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6 x 14 to 20.5 x 16.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial titles and notes, including "Shore Drift Sands at Sixty-One" and "Drifted Sands at Sixty-One."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Sands & Drift]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04227
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Drift Sands
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1879-1882
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6 x 14 to 20.5 x 16.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial titles and notes, including "Sands & Drift from a life's melange."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Wing-and-Wing]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04228
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Drift Sands
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1881-1883
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6 x 14 to 20.5 x 16.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial titles and notes, including "Sands at 64."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Sands on the Shores of my 60th year]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04229
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Drift Sands
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1879
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6 x 14 to 20.5 x 16.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial titles and notes, including "Sands on the Shores of my 60th year."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Sands at 61]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04230
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Drift Sands
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1879-1882
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6 x 14 to 20.5 x 16.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial titles and notes, including "Sands at 61" and "Sands Drifted on the Shores of Sixty Years."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Drift Sands]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04231
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Drift Sands
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1879-1882
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6 x 14 to 20.5 x 16.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial titles and notes, including "Drift Sands on the Shores of Sixty Years."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Sands Drifted on the Shores]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04232
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Drift Sands
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1879-1882
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6 x 14 to 20.5 x 16.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial titles and notes, including "Sands Drifted on the Shores of a Life in the 19th Century in the New World."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Sands]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04237
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Drift Sands
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1879-1882
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6 x 14 to 20.5 x 16.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial titles and notes, including "Sands on the Shores of 64 & '5."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [As half caught echoes]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04238
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Drift Sands
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: 1884
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6 x 14 to 20.5 x 16.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial lines and notes for an unpublished poem. The first line begins, "As half caught echoes." The relationship of this manuscript to Whitman's published work is unknown.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Drift Sands]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04239
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Drift Sands
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1879-1882
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6 x 14 to 20.5 x 16.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial lines and notes for an unpublished poem entitled "Drift Sands." The first line begins, "As we float idly."

  • Whitman Archive Title: On the Religion
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05323
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: on religion
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1870-1888
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: The spirit of this note made it into the "Lingering Note" at the end of Whitman's essay "Elias Hicks, Notes (such as they are)" in November Boughs (1888). Apparently, Whitman intended to write a longer essay which did not allude to Hicks. Grier dates this scrap from the 1870s because of the steadiness of the handwriting ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press], 6, 2101).

  • Whitman Archive Title: This journey
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00366
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: L. of G.'s Purport
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1871–1874 and about 1891
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Two drafts of a poem entitled "This journey." The lines were later incorporated as lines 6, 7, 8, and 9 in "L. of G.'s Purport," first published in 1891. On the verso are notes about "Payments to Mrs. White" between 1871 and 1874.

  • Whitman Archive Title: America! thee formulating
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00621
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: America! Thee formulating
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1881
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 13 x 20.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A draft of a poem entitled "America! thee formulating." The lines were incorporated as lines 90 and 91 in the poem "Thy Mother with Thy Equal Brood," first published in 1881. On the verso are lines that appears to be trial titles: "Voices at Early Candle-Light" and "Hurry-Notes."

  • Whitman Archive Title: Summer Rivulets
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05635
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Trial titles
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1875-1881
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: In this manuscript Whitman mentions a plan to write a "piece strongly recognizing the affiliations" of his poems. In a centered column, there are three possible titles for such a piece, and one of them is "By the road-sides," which is resonant with the title Whitman would give to the cluster "By the Roadside" first in the 1881-1882 edition and then in the 1891-1892edition of Leaves of Grass .

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Centennial Ed'n]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05636
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Trail titles
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1875-1876
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A draft advertisement, with information about price, binding and contents, for the Centennial Edition of Leaves of Grass , published in 1876. The manuscript is almost identical (with the exception of "Italian boards" instead of "Italian card") to a manuscript held at the University of Virginia (see uva.00163).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Drifts & Bubbles]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05073
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Trial titles
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1875-1876
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript contains a list of trial titles and subtitles which were possibly considered by Whitman when he was preparing the Centennial edition of Leaves of Grass together with its companion volume, Two Rivulets , published in 1876.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Century Thoughts]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05074
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Trial titles
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1875-1876
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript contains a list of trial titles which Whitman possibly considered to use in Two Rivulets , the companion volume to the Centennial edition of Leaves of Grass published in 1876.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Walt Whitman's Centennial]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05075
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Trial titles
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1875-1876
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript contains a few trial titles which Whitman possibly considered to use when he was preparing the Centennial edition of Leaves of Grass together with its companion volume, Two Rivulets , published in 1876.

  • Whitman Archive Title: A starry midnight
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00083
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: A Clear Midnight
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1881
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 21 cm x 13 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A draft of a poem entitled "A starry midnight," published as "A Clear Midnight" in 1881. At the top is a note in blue pencil that reads "? for end of poems"

  • Whitman Archive Title: Thou Orb Aloft
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00084
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1881
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 2 leaves, 11 cm x 19 cm to 23 cm x 19 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
  • Content: A two-page draft of the poem published first in 1881 as "A Summer Invocation," then published later that year with the title "Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling."

  • Whitman Archive Title: That there should be
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05650
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: [Before 1890?], on the nature of poetry
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: 1875-1888
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript contributed to the last part of the section "Five Thousand Poems" in November Boughs published in 1888 (retained within November Boughs in Complete Prose Works [1892]).

  • Whitman Archive Title: Lincoln Dont fail to note
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.07042
  • Box: 6
  • Folder: "Death of Abraham Lincoln," notes and early drafts, [1875]
  • Series: Lincoln Material
  • Date: 1876-1879
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Handwritten notes about Abraham Lincoln, most likely intended for use in Whitman's lecture, "Death of Abraham Lincoln." The page numbers refer to Samuel Penniman Bates' book, The Battle of Gettysburg (Philadelphia: T.H. Davis & Co., 1875). Bates had quoted a letter from Lincoln to General Joseph Hooker, making note of Lincoln's characteristic "homely but pointed similes" (13–14). Whitman also notes pages reproducing the Gettysburgh Address, as well as Edward Everett's remark to Lincoln about the power of his twenty lines (213–15). Whitman delivered his lecture about Lincoln in New York in 1879 and would deliver it at least eight other times over the succeeding years. Whitman would later publish a version of the lecture as "Death of Abraham Lincoln" in Specimen Days (1882–1883), which was retained in Complete Prose Works (1892).

  • Whitman Archive Title: Abraham Lincoln
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05588
  • Box: 4
  • Folder: Lincoln material, 1865-1868
  • Series: Newspaper Clippings on the Civil War
  • Date: 1878-1879
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript contains what could be a preparatory note for the lecture "Death of Abraham Lincoln" delivered in New York in 1879, in Philadelphia in 1880 and in Boston in 1881. Portions of this lecture had been originally published as "Abraham Lincoln's Death. Walt Whitman's Account of the Scene at Ford's Theatre," in the New York Sun (12 February 1876) and were included in Memoranda During the War (1875-1876). "Abraham Lincoln's Death" was revised and published as "A Poet on the Platform" in the New York Daily Tribune (15 April 1879) and was subsequently reprinted as "Death of Abraham Lincoln" in Specimen Days & Collect (1882-1883) before finally appearing in Complete Prose Works (1892).

  • Whitman Archive Title: Sketch over rapidly
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.02823
  • Box: 6
  • Folder: "Death of Abraham Lincoln," notes and early drafts, [1875]
  • Series: Lincoln Material
  • Date: 1878-1879
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Handwritten notes about a lecture on Abraham Lincoln, most likely "Death of Abraham Lincoln". These appear to be fairly early notes about the general structure of the talk, rather than an actual draft. Whitman first delivered this lecture in New York in 1879 and would deliver it at least eight other times over the succeedings years, delivering it for the last time on April 15, 1890. Whitman would later publish a version of the lecture as "Death of Abraham Lincoln" in Specimen Days (1882–1883), which was retained in Complete Prose Works (1892).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Echoes & Drift]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05541
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Trial titles
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1879-1882
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript contains what could possibly be trial titles for Specimen Days & Collect published in 1882-1883.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Tramps & Strikes
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05251
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: The Tramp and Strike Questions
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1879-1882
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This prose scrap, titled "Tramps & Strikes," varies in its wording from the undelivered address "The Tramp and Strike Question." Nonetheless, it reflects themes present in the address eventually published in Specimen Days & Collect (1882–1883).

  • Whitman Archive Title: for Tramp and strike question
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05252
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: The Tramp and Strike Questions
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1879-1882
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This prose scrap, titled "for Tramp & Strike Question," varies in its wording from the undelivered address "The Tramp and Strike Question." Nonetheless, it reflects themes present in the address eventually published in Specimen Days & Collect (1882–1883).

  • Whitman Archive Title: for the Strike & Tramp questions
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05258
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: The Tramp and Strike Questions
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1879-1882
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This prose scrap, titled "for The Strike & Tramp questions," varies in its wording from the undelivered address "The Tramp and Strike Question." Nonetheless, it reflects themes present in the address eventually published in Specimen Days & Collect (1882–1883).

  • Whitman Archive Title: N.W. Texas, Utah, New Mexico
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05339
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: On the Western United States
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1879-1882
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This scrap is alluded to in the section of Specimen Days & Collect (1882-1883) entitled "Steam-Power, Telegraphs, & America's Back-Bone." It was probably composed after September 1879, when Whitman traveled out to Denver, CO. On the verso is a page from an elections inspector's book from the 1850s.

  • Whitman Archive Title: This western two-thirds
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05340
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: On the Western United States
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1879-1882
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This scrap is alluded to in the section of Specimen Days & Collect (1882-1883) entitled "The Prairies and Great Plains in Poetry." It was probably composed after September 1879, when Whitman traveled out to Denver, CO. On the verso is a page from an elections inspector's book from the 1850s.

  • Whitman Archive Title: New American pictures
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05341
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: On the Western United States
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1879–1882
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: These notes about mountain ranges of the American West might have contributed to "America's Back-Bone," which appeared in Specimen Days & Collect (1882-1883). This manuscript was probably created after September 1879, when Whitman traveled to Denver, CO. The verso is a tax bill for someone else dated 1854. Edward Grier and Fredson Bowers theorize that Whitman came upon a large collection of obsolete forms when he started as an editor at the Brooklyn Daily Times in 1857. He used the forms as notepaper for many years.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Ever the Dawn!]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04282
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Trial titles
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1879
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial titles, written in blue crayon and pencil. Whitman used a version of the phrases here for the cluster title "From Noon to Starry Night," which first appeared in the 1881–82 edition of Leaves of Grass . The titles are written on the reverse side of a message form from the Camden post office dated August 13, 1879.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Dec 22 '79]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05505
  • Box: 3
  • Folder: [1879]
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: 1879-1882
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript contains what could possibly be a series of trial titles for Specimen Days & Collect published in 1882-1883.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Camden Notebook]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05506
  • Box: 3
  • Folder: [circa 1880], Camden (?) notebook
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: 1879-1881
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 22 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44
  • Content: The thirty-first surface in this manuscript notebook contains a note "for Preface" about "gossiping in the candle light" that resonates with the beginning of the second paragraph of the article "My Book and I," published in the Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in January 1887. This same passage also appeared one year later in "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads," published within November Boughs (1888) and later included in Leaves of Grass (1891-1892). The manuscript also contains a series of trial titles that Whitman was possibly considering when preparing Specimen Days & Collect (1882-1883). The thirty-fifth leaf contains a draft for a poem, including the deleted line "Away from houses, reading, art" that resembles the second line in the poem "A Clear Midnight," published in Leaves of Grass (1881-1882) and retained thereafter.

  • Whitman Archive Title: How Would it Do
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05173
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Undated, on the American Idiom
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1880-1885
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript contains a draft with trial titles and general ideas for the essay "Slang in America," published in the North American Review (November 1885). The piece was later reprinted in November Boughs (1888) and was retained in Complete Prose Works (1892).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [you ye ebbing]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00086
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines of "Last Ebb, and Daylight Waning," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [firm strong]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05102
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines of "You Tides with Ceaseless Swell," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Last of the ebb]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00087
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines of "Last Ebb, and Daylight Waning," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Half-caught promises]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00355
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines of "Last Ebb, and Daylight Waning," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [How they sweep down and out!]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00356
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines of "Last Ebb, and Daylight Waning," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [You neighboring surf—]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00357
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines of "By that Long Scan of Waves," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Back to these fathomless deeps returning]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00358
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines of "Last of Ebb, and Daylight Waning," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Till from the ostent]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04145
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines of "Last of Ebb, and Daylight Waning," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [rivers', bays' and ocean shores']
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04146
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines of "And Yet Not You Alone," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Nor you and yours alone]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04147
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines of "And Yet Not You Alone," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [How strange the scenes]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04148
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines of "By That Long Scan of Waves," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [What ventures, aspirations, failures—]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04149
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines of "And Yet Not You Alone," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Nor rivers' bays' and ocean]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04150
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Fancies at Navesink," first published in 1885.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Then deeper]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04167
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines of "Then Last of All," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [What spells do distant stars]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04168
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry, correspondence
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Drafts lines of "You Tides with Ceaseless Swell," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink." On the verso is correspondence on the letterhead of Bim M. Jordan, Dry Paints, Pine Wood Products.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [With many a voice]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04155
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Fancies at Navesink, " first published in 1885.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Nor you and trail of yours]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04156
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines of poems in the "Fancies at Navesink" cluster, first published in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885). Lines on the recto resemble those in "And Yet Not You Alone" and "Then Last of All." The verso contains lines for "Proudly the Flood Comes In."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [What burnt-out lives]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04157
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Fancies at Navesink," first published in THe Nineteenth Century (August 1885.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [swell and ebb!]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04159
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines of "Then Last of All," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [What fiat sends ye out]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04153
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Fancies at Navesink," first published in The Nineteent Century (August 1885).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [But Liquid utterance]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04152
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Last of Ebb, and Daylight Waning," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Ephemeral scenes]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04151
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "By That Long Scan of Waves," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [What unhelm'd ships and boats]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04166
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Fancies at Navesink," first published in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [You whirling stream's wild currents]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04160
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Fancies at Navesink," first published in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Smells of the sedge and the shore]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04161
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for the poem "Last of Ebb, and Daylight Waning," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Souls of the dying float out with you]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04164
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Fancies at Navesink," first published in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885. The verso of contains draft and trial lines for "Of That Blithe Throat of Thine," first published in Harper's Monthly Magazine (January 1885).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Swelling and ebbing the tides]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04165
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft titles for "You Tides with Ceaseless Swell," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [O ebbing tide!]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04175
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Fancies at Navesink," first published in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Voices of Ebb Tide]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04169
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial title for "Fancies at Navesink," first published in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Proudly the flood comes in]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04170
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Proudly the Flood Come In," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [The human heart in its breast]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04171
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Fancies at Navesink," first published in The Nineteent Century (August 1885).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [The land itself]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04163
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry, correspondence
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Proudly the Flood Come In," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink." On the verso is a letter from an autograph-seeker.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Ebb—Tide]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04176
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Last of Ebb, and Daylight Waning," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Echoes of Ebb Tide]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04172
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Fancies at Navesink," first published in The Nineteenth Century (1885).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Ebb Tide Ripples]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04173
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Trial titles for "Fancies at Navesink," first published in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Ebb—Tide ripples whisperings]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04174
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for the poem "Last of Ebb, and Daylight Waning," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Mainsails and topsails]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04177
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Proudly the Flood Comes In," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Ebb tide's and death's]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04178
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Fancies at Navesink," first published in The Nineteenth Century August 1885.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [What potent spells]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05103
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A draft line for "You Tides with Ceaseless Swell," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [worldly and gaily comes]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05104
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Proudly the Flood Comes In," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [With many a hurried abrupt confession]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05113
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Last of Ebb, and Daylight Waning," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [To you your cosmic]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05114
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Then Last of All," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Gaily the outward bound]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05115
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Proudly the Flood Comes In," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [How ye sweep down and out!]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05117
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Fancies at Navesink
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 3 cm x 15 cm to 25 cm x 20 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines for "Last of Ebb, and Daylight Waning," first published along with seven other poems in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), under the general title "Fancies at Navesink."

  • Whitman Archive Title: Sparse, wintry little leaves
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00359
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1887
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 23.5 cm x 15 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A draft of a poem entitled "Sparse, wintry, little leaves." The poem was later revised and published as "You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me" in 1887.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Roundly considered
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05621
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Untitled and Unidentified
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: 1880-1881
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Much of the language of this note is reproduced in the essay "Five Thousand Poems," first published in The Critic , April 16, 1887, on page 187, and again in November Boughs (1888).

  • Whitman Archive Title: Note A * While
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.07036
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Untitled and unidentified
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: 1880-1888
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1
  • Content: The passage in this manuscript appears in the section "Five Thousand Poems" of November Boughs , published in 1888 (retained within November Boughs in Complete Prose Works [1892]).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [? divide into two]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05188
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Undated, on the American Idiom
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: After 1880
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: In this manuscript, Whitman considers dividing a draft essay in two. "Slang in America," referred to here in a trial title as "Slang and Names in America," was first published in the North American Review (November 1885), and then in November Boughs (1888).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Names and Slang]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05189
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Undated, on the American Idiom
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: After 1880
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: In this manuscript, Whitman ruminates about a title, presumably for the piece published as "Slang in America," first in the North American Review (November 1885), and then in November Boughs (1888).

  • Whitman Archive Title: Note Book Walt Whitman 1333
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05549
  • Box: 3
  • Folder: Camden notebook 1885?
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: about 1885
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 24 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48
  • Content: A late notebook with notes for poem ideas, trial titles, addresses, quotations, and other material, some of which is not in Whitman's hand (see surfaces 13, 29, 36 and 38). A few of the entries contributed to published pieces of poetry. Surfaces 21 and 24 include trial titles for "Fancies at Navesink," first published in The Nineteenth Century (August 1885), and reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888). Surface 32 includes a note to "write a poem . . . to be call'd Yonnondio." Whitman first published a poem under this title in the Critic (26 November 1887). The poem was reprinted in "Sands at Seventy," an annex to the 1888 edition of Leaves of Grass , and was retained in the 1892 edition. Surface 40 contains, among other notes, a cancelled line reading "yet my soul-dearest leaves—the hardest and the last," which appeared, nearly verbatim, as the closing line of "You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me," first published along with three other poems in Lippincott's Magazine (November 1887) under the general title, "November Boughs." These four poems were reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888).

  • Whitman Archive Title: some threading Ohio's
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00082
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: As Consequent, etc.
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: 1881
  • Genre: poetry, correspondence
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 13 cm x 14.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A draft of lines of "As Consequent, Etc.," first published in the 1881 edition of Leaves of Grass . On the reverse is a letter from the Camden and Atlantic Railroad dated January 25, 1881.

  • Whitman Archive Title: ? for beginning
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05215
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Undated, on the American idiom
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: between 1881 and 1885
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A fragmentary prose manuscript written on a leaf created from the reverse sides of an envelope and letter on letterhead from the Eastern Michigan Asylum, dated January 22, 1881. No direct connection to any of Whitman's published works has been established, although the main idea expressed here—that the union of the United States depends upon the English language as a shared legacy— was one that Whitman expressed several times throughout his life, beginning at least with the publication of "America's Mightiest Inheritance" in the April 12 1856 issue of Life Illustrated .

  • Whitman Archive Title: [It will seem strange]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05244
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Robert Burns as Poet and Person
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1882-1886
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This prose scrap alludes to both Rabelais and Robert Burns. Here, Whitman describes Burns' principle qualities as "animal appetites, lusts, and bibulousness." In his essay, "Robert Burns as Poet and Person," Whitman notes that Burns' poetry includes "lyrics of illicit loves and carousing intoxication." This essay, with the preliminary title of "Robert Burns" first appeared in The Critic (16 December 1882), but this particular phrase does not appear in the essay "Robert Burns as Poet and Person" until its publication in The North American Review 143 (November 1886), 429. This essay was later reprinted in Democratic Vistas and Other Papers (1888) and in November Boughs (1888). The essay was also retained, still within November Boughs , in Complete Prose Works (1892).

  • Whitman Archive Title: Burns says
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05247
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Robert Burns as Poet and Person
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1882-1886
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This prose scrap quotes a March 1792 letter from Robert Burns to George Thompson. In the essay "Robert Burns as Poet and Person," Whitman cites letters to Thompson, particularly letters where Burns discusses his own early love poetry. This scrap is not directly quoted in the essay, but there are allusions to it. The letters are not mentioned in the preliminary publication of the essay, under the title "Robert Burns", which appeared in The Critic (16 December 1882; however, Thompson's letters figure in the essay "Robert Burns as Poet and Person" published in The North American Review 143 (November 1886), 429. This essay was later reprinted in Democratic Vistas and Other Papers (1888) and in November Boughs (1888). The essay was also retained, still within November Boughs , in Complete Prose Works (1892).

  • Whitman Archive Title: The wreck of the "Mexico"
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05318
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Miscellaneous notes or reminders
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1882
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This scrap refers to the 1836 wreck of the Mexico . Whitman writes about this in the passage "Paumanok, and My Life on It as a Child and a Young Man," published in Specimen Days & Collect (1882-1883). According to Grier, the wrecks of the Mexico and the Bristol are also alluded to in "The Sleepers," section 4. The scrap dates from December 1882, Grier says, because the address on the verso is that of Robert Pearsall Smith, whom Whitman met then ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts , ed. Edward F. Grier [New York: New York University Press, 1984] 3: 1186).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [(for name?]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05186
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Undated, on the American Idiom
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: After 1883
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: In this manuscript, Whitman ruminates about a title, presumably for the piece published as "Slang in America," first in the North American Review (November 1885), and then in November Boughs (1888).

  • Whitman Archive Title: New Mexico Religion Catholic
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05342
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: On the Western United States
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1883
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A lot of the language of this scrap is taken from page 1238 of Harper's Statistical Gazetteer (1855). In 1883, Whitman was asked to compose a poem for the 333rd anniversary of the founding of Santa Fe, NM. He responded with a letter that was published in the Philadelphia Press August 5, 1883. It was reprinted in the section of November Boughs (1888), entitled "The Spanish Element in Our Nationality."

  • Whitman Archive Title: Two or three memories
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05304
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Notes and Memories
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: December 13, 1883
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This item refers to the Italian tenor Giovanni Matteo Mario's death on December 11,1883. Whitman referred to Mario in Specimen Days & Collect , published in 1882-1883, in the passages entitled "Plays and Operas too"An earlier version of the essay appeared in "The Old Bowery," and "Old Actors, Singers, Shows, etc., in New York."

  • Whitman Archive Title: Though the spare hours
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05263
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Robert Burns as Poet and Person
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1884-1888
  • Genre: prose, correspondence
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: According to Grier, this scrap was found in an envelope with numerous newspaper clippings about Robert Burns dating from March 25, 1836 to August 9, 1890 ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press], 3, 1140). The notes were apparently intended for a revision to the essay "Robert Burns as Poet and Person," which appeared under the title "Robert Burns" in The Critic (16 December 1882), and as "Robert Burns as Poet and Person" in The North American Review (November 1886). This essay was later reprinted in Democratic Vistas and Other Papers (1888) and in November Boughs (1888). The essay was also retained, still within November Boughs , in Complete Prose Works (1892). The letter on the verso is dated June 10, 1884.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [? or Names]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05187
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Undated, on the American Idiom
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: After 1884
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: In this manuscript, Whitman ruminates about the titles of two articles; one was published as "Slang in America," first in the periodical the North American Review in November 1885, and then in November Boughs .

  • Whitman Archive Title: In view of that progress
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05321
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: on religion
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1884-1887
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This scrap is a draft of Whitman's essay "Five Thousand Poems," first published in The Critic , number 172, April 16, 1887. It was later reprinted in Democratic Vistas and Other Papers (London, 1888), and November Boughs (1888). The language on this leaf appears nearly verbatim in "Five Thousand Poems." On the verso is a partial letter to Whitman from the office of The Critic .

  • Whitman Archive Title: See page 81
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05320
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Miscellaneous notes or reminders
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1884-1885
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This scrap refers to pages from Asia Booth Clarke's The Elder and the Younger Booth (1882), according to Grier ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press], 3, 1194). Although there is no mention of Junius Brutus Booth's vegetarianism on page 84, as Whitman indicates, the phrase "strict vegetarian" appears in Whitman's article "Booth and 'The Bowery,'" first published in the New York Tribune (16 August 1885, page 4), and then in the essay "The Old Bowery" November Boughs (1888).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [He Went Out With the Tide]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.01559
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: [1865 or before], war and hospital notes and memoranda
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1885-1891
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript contains a passage used in a note (entitled "Another Note") to the poem "An Ended Day" published in 1891 in Good-Bye My Fancy 2d Annex to Leaves of Grass .

  • Whitman Archive Title: L. of G.'s Purport
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00364
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: L.of G.'s Purport
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1891
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A draft of the first two lines of "L. of G.'s Purport," first published in 1891.

  • Whitman Archive Title: This Journey
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00365
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: L. of G.'s Purport
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1891
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A draft entitled "This Journey" (the manuscript suggests Whitman was also considering the title "My Task"), later incorporated as lines 6, 7, 8, and 9 in "L. of G.'s Purport," first published in 1891. Also on the leaf is an undated, cancelled letter.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Now for the P]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00515
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Supplement Hours
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1892
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6.5 x 15.5 to 21 x 13 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Drafts and trial lines of the poem "Supplement Hours," first published posthumously in 1897.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Sane culminating hours]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00516
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Supplement Hours
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1892
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6.5 cm x 15.5 cm to 21 cm x 13 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Drafts and trial lines of the poem "Supplement Hours," first published posthumously in 1897.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Supplement hours of a half Paralytic]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00517
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Supplement Hours
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1892
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6.5 cm x 15.5 cm to 21 cm x 13 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Drafts and trial lines of the poem "Supplement Hours," first published posthumously in 1897.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Supplement Hours
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00518
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Supplement Hours
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1892
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6.5 cm x 15.5 cm to 21 cm x 13 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Drafts and trial lines of the poem "Supplement Hours," first published posthumously in 1897.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Supplement Hours
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00519
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Supplement Hours
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1892
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6.5 cm x 15.5 cm to 21 cm x 13 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Drafts and trial lines of the poem "Supplement Hours," first published posthumously in 1897.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Supplement Hours
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00520
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Supplement Hours
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1892
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6.5 cm x 15.5 cm to 21 cm x 13 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Drafts and trial lines of the poem "Supplement Hours," first published posthumously in 1897.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Sane, culminated random hours]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00521
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Supplement Hours
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1892
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6.5 cm x 15.5 cm to 21 cm x 13 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Drafts and trial lines of the poem "Supplement Hours," first published posthumously in 1897.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [As wild bees hum]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00522
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Supplement Hours
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1892
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6.5 cm x 15.5 cm to 21 cm x 13 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Drafts and trial lines of the poem "Supplement Hours," first published posthumously in 1897.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [now away from books—]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00524
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Supplement Hours
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1892
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6.5 cm x 15.5 cm to 21 cm x 13 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Drafts and trial lines of the poem "Supplement Hours," first published posthumously in 1897.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [the wild Bee flitting hums]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00525
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Supplement Hours
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1892
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6.5 cm x 15.5 cm to 21 cm x 13 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Drafts and trial lines of the poem "Supplement Hours," first published posthumously in 1897.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [A September Supplement]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00526
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Supplement Hours
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1892
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6.5 cm x 15.5 cm to 21 cm x 13 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Drafts and trial lines of the poem "Supplement Hours," first published posthumously in 1897.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Supplement Hours
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00527
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Supplement Hours
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1892
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6.5 cm x 15.5 cm to 21 cm x 13 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Drafts and trial lines of the poem "Supplement Hours," first published posthumously in 1897.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Old Chants
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04598
  • Box: 6
  • Folder: Poetry Manuscript, Old Chants
  • Series: Lincoln Material
  • Date: about 1891
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A draft of the first five lines of the poem "Old Chants," first published in 1891. The draft shows that Whitman also considered the titles "An Ancient Ballad Reciting" and "An Ancient Song Reciting." The verso is blank.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Distinctive and without relation
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05623
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Untitled and Unidentified
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: 1887
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Much of the language of this note is reproduced in the essay "Five Thousand Poems," first published in The Critic , April 16, 1887, on page 187, and again in November Boughs (1888).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [To-Day at the peak]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00360
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Glad the Jaunts for the Known
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1888
  • Genre: poetry, correspondence
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 28 cm x 21 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft of one or possibly two poems beginning "To-Day at the peak" and "Glad the jaunts for the known." Lines from this manuscript were published posthumously as "[Glad the Jaunts for the Known]." On the verso is a letter, dated January, 1888, from James G. Bennett, editor of the New York Herald .

  • Whitman Archive Title: Grand is the seen
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00363
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Grand is the Seen
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1891
  • Genre: poetry, correspondence
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 12.5 cm x 20.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A draft of the poem "Grand is the Seen," first published in 1891. On the verso is the end of a letter from R. Rooke Morgau.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Now Supplement Hours]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00523
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Supplement Hours
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1891
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 6.5 cm x 15.5 cm to 21 cm x 13 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft and trial lines of a poem unpublished in Whitman's lifetime, though published posthumously as "Supplement Hours." The poem was part of a cluster entitled "Old Age Echoes," included in an edition of Leaves of Grass compiled by Whitman's literary executors and published in 1897 (Boston: Small, Maynard). On the verso is a prose manuscript recalling Whitman's years in Washington during and after the Civil War. The prose manuscript has no known relationship to his published work.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Drift Sands.
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04183
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: "Drift Sands"
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1888
  • Genre: prose, poetry, correspondence
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft lines and phrases under the title "Drift Sands." Whitman never published a poem with this title, though this and several other closely related manuscripts seem to constitute working drafts for the couplet "As idly drifting down the ebb, / Such ripples, half-caught voices, echo from the shore," which appears before the final paragraph of "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads," first published in November Boughs (1888). Most of "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads" was drawn from three previously published pieces ("A Backward Glance on My Own Road [1884]," "How I Made a Book" [1886], and "My Book and I" [1887]). The couplet, however, was not part of any of those earlier essays. On the reverse side of the manuscript is a letter to Whitman dated June 8, 1885.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Drift Sands
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05999
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: "Drift Sands"
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1888
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Two draft lines, with the title "Drift Sands." Whitman never published a poem with this title, though this and several other closely related manuscripts seem to constitute working drafts for the couplet "As idly drifting down the ebb, / Such ripples, half-caught voices, echo from the shore," which appears before the final paragraph of "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads," first published in November Boughs (1888). Most of "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads" was drawn from three previously published pieces ("A Backward Glance on My Own Road [1884]," "How I Made a Book" [1886], and "My Book and I" [1887]). The couplet, however, was not part of any of those earlier essays.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Notes and Flanges.—No. 1.
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04235
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: "Drift Sands"
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1888
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Manuscript scrap containing two trial titles and two poetic lines, with corrections. Although Whitman never published a poem with either of these titles, this and several other closely related manuscripts seem to constitute working drafts for the couplet "As idly drifting down the ebb, / Such ripples, half-caught voices, echo from the shore," which appears before the final paragraph of "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads," first published in November Boughs (1888). Most of "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads" was drawn from three previously published pieces ("A Backward Glance on My Own Road [1884]," "How I Made a Book" [1886], and "My Book and I" [1887]). The couplet, however, was not part of any of those earlier essays.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Ripple and echoes from the]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04236
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: "Drift Sands"
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1888
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Manuscript containing draft versions of lines that appear before the final paragraph of "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads" as the couplet "As idly drifting down the ebb, / Such ripples, half-caught voices, echo from the shore." First published in November Boughs (1888) "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads" was mostly made up of material from three previously published pieces: "A Backward Glance on My Own Road (1884)," "How I Made a Book" (1886), and "My Book and I" (1887). The couplet, however, was not part of any of those earlier essays.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Drift Sands
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04240
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: "Drift Sands"
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1888
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript of two draft lines and title is closely related to several other manuscripts, all of which seem to constitute working drafts for the lines that appear before the final paragraph of "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads" as the couplet "As idly drifting down the ebb, / Such ripples, half-caught voices, echo from the shore." First published in November Boughs (1888) "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads" was mostly made up of material from three previously published pieces: "A Backward Glance on My Own Road (1884)," "How I Made a Book" (1886), and "My Book and I" (1887). The couplet, however, was not part of any of those earlier essays.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [To the liquid]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04285
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Trial titles
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: about 1888
  • Genre: prose, poetry, correspondence
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A series of short phrases, the longest of which is written with hanging indentation. This manuscript probably contributed to the couplet "As idly drifting down the ebb, / Such ripples, half-caught voices, echo from the shore," which appears before the final paragraph of "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads," first published in November Boughs (1888). Most of "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads" was drawn from three previously published pieces ("A Backward Glance on My Own Road [1884]," "How I Made a Book" [1886], and "My Book and I" [1887]). The couplet, however, was not part of any of those earlier essays. On the reverse side of the manuscript is a letter to Whitman dated November 14, 1884.

  • Whitman Archive Title: To the Year 1889
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.04597
  • Box: 6
  • Folder: To the Year 1889
  • Series: Proofs and Offprints
  • Date: about 1889
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1
  • Content: A proof of the poem "To the Year 1889," first published in 1889, with a note in Whitman's hand about its publication in the Critic . The poem was later published as "To the Pending Year."

  • Whitman Archive Title: For us two, reader dear
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00362
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: For us Two, Reader Dear
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: about 1890
  • Genre: poetry, correspondence
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 22.5 cm x 17.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A draft of the poem "For Us Two, Reader Dear," first published in 1891. Also on the leaf is a letter to Whitman dated June 4, 1890 from Mrs. Noble T. Biddle.

  • Whitman Archive Title: But only pond-babble
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05256
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: Only Mulleins and Bumble-bees
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: 1890-1891
  • Genre: prose, correspondence
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: The notes on the recto are prefatory in nature and reflect the spirit of the preface to Whitman's 1891 Good-Bye My Fancy 2d Annex to Leaves of Grass . The exact phrase, "the mullein and the bumble-bee" is on page 36 of the section entitled "Gathering the Corn" of Good-Bye My Fancy . On the verso is a partial letter from Whitman to unknown friends.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Germany, or even Europe
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05316
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: Miscellaneous notes or reminders
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: 1890-1891
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript led to a passage published in "Have We a National Literature," ( North American Review , 152, March 1891), and in Good-bye My Fancy 2nd Annex to Leaves of Grass (1891), in the section entitled "American National Literature."

  • Whitman Archive Title: A Song for Sweet Water
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00361
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: A Song for Sweet Water
  • Series: Manuscripts
  • Date: July, 1890
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 28 cm x 21.5 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Notes and trial lines for a poem to commemorate "the new water works" entitled "A Song for Sweet Water," subtitled "Pure, general sweet water." A note at the bottom of the document gives the date as July, 1890.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [the intellectual and emotional]
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.02813
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: War and hospital notes and memoranda
  • Series: Notes and Memoranda
  • Date: about 1891
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft fragment of a note for the short poem "An Ended Day," which was first published in Good-Bye My Fancy (1891).

  • Whitman Archive Title: Address Book
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.02821
  • Box: 3
  • Folder: [1866-1877], address books
  • Series: Notebooks
  • Date: 1867-1875
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 52 leaves, handwritten; print
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | 95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 | 100 | 101 | 102 | 103 | 104
  • Content: A disbound notebook, mostly filled with names and addresses. However, the sixty-first surface contains an idea for a poem about "The Storm / all the various things that happen in a storm." It is possible that this is an early conception of the poem that would eventually be titled "Proud Music of the Storm" (originally titled "Proud Musc of the Sea-Storm"). The note mentions being "at sea," as well as "sleeping" and "wak[ing]," all of which are ideas found in "Proud Music." The range of dates in the notebook also falls within the likely period of compositon for that poem, with an earliest recorded date of January 1867 (leaf 18). "Proud Music of the Sea-Storm" was first published in the February 1869 issue of the Atlantic Monthly , but was completed by 30 November 1868 , when Whitman sent a copy of the poem to Ralph Waldo Emerson.

View All Works
Back to top