Content:
Edward Grier dates this notebook before 1855, based on the pronoun revisions from third person to first person and the notebook's similarity to Whitman's early
"Talbot Wilson"
notebook (
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
[New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:102). Grier notes that a portion of this notebook (beginning "How spied the captain and sailors") describes the wreck of the ship
San Francisco
in January 1854 (1:108 n33). A note on one of the last pages of the notebook (surface 26) matches the plot of the first of four tales Whitman published as "Some Fact-Romances" in
The Aristidean
in 1845, so segments of the notebook may have been written as early as the 1840s. Lines from the notebook were used in "Song of Myself" and "A Song of the Rolling Earth," which appeared in the 1856
Leaves of Grass
. Language and ideas from the notebook also appear to have contributed to other poems and prose, including "Miracles;" the preface to the 1855
Leaves of Grass
; "The Sleepers," which first appeared as the fourth poem in the 1855
Leaves
; and "A Song of Joys," which appeared as "Poem of Joys" in the 1860 edition.
Content:
Bound draft of a poem unpublished in Whitman's lifetime, titled "Pictures." The first several lines of draft were revised and published as "My Picture-Gallery" in
The American
in October 1880.
Content:
Draft of fifteen lines of poetry, first published only after Whitman's death
in
Notes and Fragments
(1899). The last three lines on this manuscript leaf appear in
another version in a long manuscript, "Pictures," which probably dates to the 1850s
and is held at the Beinecke Library, Yale.
Whitman Archive Title: [Two scenes capriciously rising out of the past]
Content:
Portions appear to be trial lines for a poem entitled "Pictures" published
posthumously, first in 1925. Other lines have an unknown
relationship to Whitman's published work.
