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Catalog of a Walt Whitman Poetry Manuscript in the The Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College

Original records created by The Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College; 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: [The Epos of a Life]
  • Whitman Archive ID: dar.00001
  • Date: about 1867
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
  • Content: This draft is related to "Inscription," the prefatory poem of the 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass , which was later revised as "Small the Theme of My Chant." The smaller leaf, bearing a revised first line, was formerly pasted to the larger leaf. Other manuscripts held at the Library of Congress (Charles E. Feinberg Collection) and the New York Public Library (Oscar Lion Collection) open with the same revised line, though the published poem does not.
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