Original finding aid created by Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center; revised and expanded by the Walt Whitman Archive and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. Encoded Archival Description completed with the assistance of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Gladys Kreible Delmas Foundation, the University of Nebraska Research Council, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services.
This catalog was created from the finding aid created by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin, and obtained by the Walt Whitman Archive. The original papers are held at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.
Handwritten manuscripts, fragments, notes, proofs, galleys, clippings, monographs, correspondence, drawings, photographs, and memorabilia document the life and work of Walt Whitman and include information about Whitman created and collected by several of his early admirers and devotees. The collection is organized into four series: I. Works, 1846-1913, nd (2 boxes), II. Correspondence, 1863-1892, nd (1 box), III. Works and Correspondence by Others, 1863-1956, nd (3 boxes), and IV. Images and Checks, 1875-1887, nd (1 folder)
The earliest dated material consists of tearsheets of "The Tomb-Blossoms," published in 1846 in The United States Magazine and Democratic. The bulk of the materials dated after Whitman's death in 1892 originated with Whitman's friend and biographer, Horace Traubel; Whitman Society President Gustave Percival Wiksell; Whitman scholars Richard M. Bucke and Milton Hindus; and William Douglas O'Connor. In addition to Whitman's original manuscripts, a draft fragment in the hand of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "VIII | O subtle, various world," is bound with correspondence between Whitman and Tennyson and manuscript material for Leaves of Grass "Sands at Seventy: To Get the Final Lilt of Songs."
Many of the manuscripts and letters are in fragile condition and access to individual items may be limited while they undergo conservation treatment. All Whitman items are handwritten unless otherwise indicated. Additional Whitman material is located in the Ransom Center's vertical files, art collection, photography collection, and personal effects.
Only those items deemed poetry and/or prose manuscripts are described in this catalog.
For additional biographical information, see "Walt Whitman", by Ed Folsom and Kenneth M. Price, and the chronology of Whitman's Life.
