Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Literary Manuscripts
  3. Manuscript Catalogs
  4. duk.ead01_duk.00130

Rules for Composition

  • Whitman Archive Title: Rules for Composition
  • Whitman Archive ID: duk.00130
  • Repository ID: MS q 136
  • Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in the Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
  • Date: Early 1850s
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: In this manuscript (likely from the early 1850s), Whitman describes his views on style and composition. His comments about the importance of a lack of "ornament" in literature are similar to lines from the preface to the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass . Whitman reworked some of those ideas on ornament and they appeared in the poem "Says" in the 1860–1861 edition of Leaves . The poem was later retitled "Suggestions" and was retained in Leaves until 1872 but thereafter was excluded.
View All Works
Back to top