Commentary

Selected Criticism

This section of the Archive offers a selection of current criticism and historical commentary. In addition to a number of essays reprinted with permission, we feature more than 30 full-length books. Kenneth M. Price, Ed Folsom, and Matt Miller have been successful in retaining electronic rights to their volumes published by the University of North Carolina Press, the University of Nebraska Press, and Blackwell Publishing. We have also secured permission from the University of Iowa Press to put online most volumes from the Whitman series directed by Folsom. We are grateful to each of these publishers for their generosity. Back issues of the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review are also available in full text via our searchable bibliography, and 754 entries from Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia are available here.

We encourage scholars in the future to negotiate with their publishers about retaining electronic rights to their work (or at least electronic rights jointly held by the writer and by the journal or press). It is our hope that this section of the Archive will grow significantly as we secure copyright releases to more works of criticism. We strongly urge scholars to retain electronic rights by filling out a SPARC addendum to contracts, allowing for the retention of electronic rights. The well-worded addendum that can be attached to contracts is at http://www.arl.org/sparc/author.

Allen, Gay Wilson, and Ed Folsom, ed. Walt Whitman & the World (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995). PDF
Asselineau, Roger. The Evolution of Walt Whitman: An Expanded Edition (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999). PDF
Athenot, Éric, and Cristanne Miller, ed. Whitman & Dickinson: A Colloquy (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2017). PDF
Belasco, Susan, Ed Folsom, and Kenneth M. Price, ed. Leaves of Grass: The Sesquicentennial Essays (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007). PDF
Blake, David Haven, and Michael Robertson, ed. Walt Whitman, Where the Future Becomes Present (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2008). PDF
Buinicki, Martin T. Walt Whitman's Reconstruction: Poetry and Publishing between Memory and History (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2011). PDF
Cohen, Matt. Whitman's Drift: Imagining Literary Distribution (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2017). PDF
Erkkila, Betsy. The Whitman Revolution: Sex, Poetry, and Politics (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2020). PDF
Erkkila, Betsy, ed. Walt Whitman's Songs of Male Intimacy and Love: "Live Oak, with Moss" and "Calamus" (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2011). PDF
Folsom, Ed. Whitman Making Books/Books Making Whitman (Iowa City: Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, 2005). HTML
Folsom, Ed, and Kenneth M. Price. Re-Scripting Walt Whitman (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005). HTML
Folsom, Ed, ed. Walt Whitman: The Centennial Essays (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994). PDF
Folsom, Ed, ed. Whitman East & West: New Contexts for Reading Walt Whitman (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002). PDF
Gerhardt, Christine. A Place for Humility: Whitman, Dickinson, and the Natural World (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014). PDF
Grünzweig, Walter. Constructing the German Walt Whitman (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995). PDF
Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. Walt Whitman and the Earth: A Study in Ecopoetics (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2004). HTML PDF
Krieg, Joann P. Walt Whitman & the Irish (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000). HTML PDF
Krieg, Joann P. A Whitman Chronology (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998). PDF
Lawson, Andrew. Walt Whitman & the Class Struggle (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2006). PDF
Levin, Joanna, and Edward Whitley, ed. Whitman among the Bohemians (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014). PDF
Mack, Stephen John. The Pragmatic Whitman (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002). HTML PDF
Martin, Robert K, ed. The Continuing Presence of Walt Whitman: The Life after the Life (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992). PDF
Miller, Edwin Haviland. Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself": A Mosaic of Interpretations (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989). PDF
Miller, Matt. Collage of Myself: Walt Whitman and the Making of Leaves of Grass (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010). PDF
Myerson, Joel, ed. Whitman in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Memoirs, and Interviews by Friends and Associates (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000). PDF
Pavese, Cesare. Interpretation of the Poetry of Walt Whitman, Honors Thesis (University of Turin, 1930), translated and with an introduction by Lawrence G. Smith (© Smith 2023; The Walt Whitman Archive, 2023). PDF
Price, Kenneth M. To Walt Whitman, America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). HTML
Schmidgall, Gary, ed. Intimate with Walt: Selections from Whitman's Conversations with Horace Traubel, 1888–1892 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2001). PDF
Schmidgall, Gary, ed. Conserving Walt Whitman's Fame: Selections from Horace Traubel's Conservator, 1890–1919 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2006). PDF
Sten, Christopher, and Tyler Hoffman, ed. "This Mighty Convulsion": Whitman and Melville Write the Civil War (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2019). PDF
Thomas, M. Wynn. Transatlantic Connections: Whitman U.S. / Whitman U.K (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2005). PDF
Tuggle, Lindsay. The Afterlives of Specimens: Science, Mourning, and Whitman's Civil War (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2017). PDF
Whitman, Walt. The Correspondence, vol. 7, ed. Ted Genoways (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2004). PDF
Whitman, Walt. Selected Letters of Walt Whitman, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990). PDF
Wilson, Ivy, ed. Whitman Noir: Black America and the Good Gray Poet (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014). PDF

Articles

Corona, Mario. "The Furtive Hen and the Cat Whose Tail Was Too Long: On Whitman's Traces." HTML
Folsom, Ed. "'A spirt of my own seminal wet': Spermatoid Design in Walt Whitman's 1860 Leaves of Grass." PDF
Helms, Alan. "Whitman's 'Live Oak with Moss'." HTML
Helms, Alan, and Hershel Parker. "Commentary." HTML
Jewell, Andrew, and Kenneth M. Price. "Twentieth-Century Mass Media Appearances." HTML
Murray, Martin G. "Pete the Great: A Biography of Peter Doyle." HTML
Murray, Martin G. "Traveling with the Wounded: Walt Whitman and Washington's Civil War Hospitals." HTML
Nelson, Robert K., and Kenneth M. Price. "Debating Manliness: Thomas Wentworth Higginson, William Sloane Kennedy, and the Question of Whitman." HTML
Parker, Hershel. "The Real 'Live Oak, with Moss': Straight Talk about Whitman's 'Gay Manifesto'." HTML
Price, Kenneth M. "Love, War, and Revision in Whitman's Blue Book." PDF
Santayana, George. "Walt Whitman: A Dialogue." HTML

Selected Criticism

Introduction

Books

Articles