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Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in the Rare & Special Books Collection, University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

Original records created by the Walt Whitman Archive, based upon information from the repository. Encoded Archival Description completed with the assistance of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Individual items at this repository

  • Whitman Archive Title: Walt Whitman [The late Dartmouth College utterance]
  • Whitman Archive ID: buf.00003
  • Date: 1872
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 4 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
  • Content: A seemingly complete draft of a piece of journalism, with corrections and notes to the printer, written in late June 1872. The specificity of Whitman's notes to the printer, including instructions about which page and column to print the piece on, would suggest that Whitman had a specific paper in mind for its publication. It is unclear, however, which paper, if any, ever published the piece. Whitman's instructions to publish the article "on Friday June 28th or Saturday June 29th [1872]" would suggest that it was a daily paper, possibly in Washington, D.C., where Whitman was living at the time. Written in the third-person, the piece reviews Whitman's own performance at Dartmouth College's commencement in 1872, where he read his newly published poem, "As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free." The article then turns to a broader discussion of the style and themes of Whitman's poetry, with speculation about whether he may be "a real national poet." It reaches the conclusion that "Walt Whitman is certainly taking position as an original force and new power in literature." At the end is pasted a corrected proof of the poem "By Broad Potomac's Shore," which Whitman intended to be published along with the self-review. The poem had first appeared in the just-published volume As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free (1872), along with the title poem and five others.
  • Whitman Archive Title: How I Still Get Around and Take Notes (No. 5)
  • Whitman Archive ID: buf.00002
  • Date: 1881
  • 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 complete draft, with corrections and notes to the printer, of "How I Still Get Around and Take Notes. (No. 5)," a piece of journalism that appeared in The Critic (Vol. I, no. 24) on December 3, 1881. Portions of the piece would later be reprinted as three separate sections of Specimen Days (1882–1883): "A Visit, at the Last, to R. W. Emerson," "Other Concord Notations," and "Boston Common—More of Emerson." The article was also reprinted, with small portions excised, in Alexander Ireland's 1882 volume In Memoriam. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Recollections of His Visits to England in 1833, 1847–8, 1872–3, and Extracts from Unpublished Letters (London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co.), 113–115.
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