[One main] | Whitman Archive

Whitman Archive Title: [One main]
Whitman Archive ID: loc.03853
Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839-1919, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Box: 16
Folder: Smith, Robert Pearsall
Series: General Correspondence
Date: about 1887
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten; printed
View Images: 1 | 2
Content: Clipping, with handwritten revisions, of a passage from "A Backward Glance on My Own Road," which had been published in the January 5, 1884 issue of The Critic. This passage was incorporated into "My Book and I," which was first published in the January 1887 issue of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. It was also retained when Whitman used these and two other earlier essays ("How 'Leaves of Grass' Was Made" and "How I Made a Book") to fashion "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads," first published in November Boughs (1888) and reprinted in the so-called deathbed edition of 1891–1892. It is unclear whether this manuscript was created in the processes that produced "My Book and I" or if it dates from the later work to create "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads."