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- nyp.ead01_nyp.00022
I last winter observed the
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Whitman Archive Title: I last winter observed the
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Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00022
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Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library
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Date: Between 1850 and 1855
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Genre: poetry
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Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
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1
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Content:
Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of
Leaves of Grass
. Sculley Bradley and Harold W. Blodgett suggest that the mention of a "wild-drake" may connect this scrap to the line about a "wood-drake" in the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself" (
Leaves of Grass: Comprehensive Reader's Edition
, ed. Harold W. Blodgett and Sculley Bradley [New York: New York University Press, 1965]). However, nothing else about the words in this manuscript suggest a connection to that line. The appearance of the paper, ink, and the letter forms do correspond with those in other pre-1855 manuscripts.
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