for lect on Literature | Whitman Archive

Whitman Archive Title: for lect on Literature
Whitman Archive ID: loc.05629
Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Thomas Biggs Harned Collection of the Library of Congress
Series: Recovered Cardboard Butterfly and Notebooks, [1847]-[circa 1863-1864]
Date: 1850s or 1860s
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
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Content: Whitman's heading indicates that these brief notes were intended for a lecture on "Literature" or "Democracy." The notes contain only two short lines, both about "literary men." Based on the handwriting, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to the 1850s ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 4:1591). This date can be supported by Whitman's interest in oratory and goal of becoming a lecturer in the 1850s, though he also maintained these interests in the 1860s. He explained in a letter to his mother of June 9, 1863: "I think something of commencing a series of lectures & readings &c. through different cities of the north, to supply myself with funds for my Hospital & Soldiers visits." Whitman's meditation on literature and its relation to "Democracy" in this manuscript may have contributed to his essay "Democracy," which appeared in the Galaxy in 1867 and was later incorporated into Democratic Vistas (1871).