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Catalog of the Walt Whitman Poetry Manuscripts in the Joel A. Myerson Collection of Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Rare Books & Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina.

Original records created by the Walt Whitman Archive and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, based on information from Rare Books & Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina. Encoded Archival Description completed with the assistance of the Gladys Kreible 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: Veil with their lids, &c
  • Whitman Archive ID: usc.00001
  • Repository Title: "Veil with their lids," Manuscript poem
  • Date: about 1870
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 23 x 14.1, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A manuscript of the poem "Penitenzia," unpublished in Whitman's lifetime. The poem is apparently based on a photograph of Whitman possibly taken by the photographer, William Kurtz, in the 1860s. A note at the top of the manuscript, in Whitman's hand, reads, "p. 10 Passage to India," indicating that the poem might have been intended for inclusion in the volume of that name ( Passage to India ) published in 1870. An earlier draft of this poem appears in a notebook now in the Feinberg Collection at the Library of Congress and was the basis for a version titled "Mask with Their Lids," published in Clifton J. Furness's Walt Whitman's Workshop and Harold W. Blodgett and Scully Bradley's Leaves of Grass: Comprehensive Reader's Edition . The lines seem to anticipate the poem, "Out from Behind This Mask," first published in the New York Tribune on February 19, 1876.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Annex at 69
  • Whitman Archive ID: usc.00003
  • Date: about 1888
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, 9.2 x 21.3 cm, handwritten
  • View Images: 1
  • Content: This manuscript contains titles for a contemplated cluster of poems, "Annex at 69" and "Fancies at Navesink & other pieces 1883 to 88." The poem sequence "Fancies at Navesink" first appeared in the August 1885 issue of Nineteenth Century . The eight poems from this sequence were then reprinted in a section of November Boughs entitled "Sands at Seventy" in 1888, which then became an annex to Leaves of Grass that same year. The poems reappeared under the heading "Fancies at Navesink," although still part of "Sands at Seventy," in 1891. The manuscript was matted, along with a Frederick Gutekunst photograph of Whitman. Because of the matting, the verso of the manuscript is not accessible.

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