Much of the work of the Whitman Archive has been focused on editing Whitman's poetry and prose manuscripts, which are located at repositories around the world. We include both poetry and prose manuscripts in this index, since it is often hard to determine the boundary between prose and verse in Whitman's manuscripts—especially in the pre-war years, Whitman habitually migrated his writing from prose to verse. Work on Whitman's manuscripts is ongoing, and we expect more manuscripts to be added over time, as we are able to complete the work of editing them. For more about our editorial policy and encoding practices for Whitman's manuscripts, see our editorial policy statement. To see and search several of Whitman's notebooks, which are not included in this manuscripts index, visit the Notebooks index.
In this index we have included "not before" and "not after" dates to give a general estimate of when the manuscript was written. Since most of Whitman's manuscripts are undated, this range is often necessarily speculative. For further specificity and explanation of the date associated with any manuscript, see the dates and editorial notes in the metadata sections at the top of the individual transcription files. To sort the index list use the "sort" dropdown.
In addition to the transcribed Whitman manuscripts listed here, we offer access to many additional manuscripts through the Integrated Catalog of Walt Whitman's Literary Manuscripts. The catalog provides access to images of manuscripts, information about holding repositories, and notes on the relationship between the manuscripts and Whitman's published writings.
Simply enter the word you wish to find and the search engine will search for every instance of the word in the journals. For example: Fight. All instances of the use of the word fight will show up on the results page.
Using an asterisk (*) will increase the odds of finding the results you are seeking. For example: Fight*. The search results will display every instance of fight, fights, fighting, etc. More than one wildcard may be used. For example: *ricar*. This search will return most references to the Aricara tribe, including Ricara, Ricares, Aricaris, Ricaries, Ricaree, Ricareis, and Ricarra. Using a question mark (?) instead of an asterisk (*) will allow you to search for a single character. For example, r?n will find all instances of ran and run, but will not find rain or ruin.
Searches are not case sensitive. For example: george will come up with the same results as George.
Searching for a specific phrase may help narrow down the results. Rather long phrases are no problem. For example: "This white pudding we all esteem".
Because of the creative spellings used by the journalists, it may be necessary to try your search multiple times. For example: P?ro*. This search brings up numerous variant spellings of the French word pirogue, "a large dugout canoe or open boat." Searching for P?*r*og?* will bring up other variant spellings. Searching for canoe or boat also may be helpful.
| Entering in only one field | Searches |
|---|---|
| Year, Month, & Day | Single day |
| Year & Month | Whole month |
| Year | Whole year |
| Month & Day | 1600-#-# to 2100-#-# |
| Month | 1600-#-1 to 2100-#-31 |
| Day | 1600-01-# to 2100-12-# |