Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Literary Manuscripts
  3. Manuscript Catalogs
  4. rut.ead01

Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in the Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Original records created by Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries; revised and expanded by the Walt Whitman Archive and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. Encoded Archival Description completed with the assistance of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the University of Nebraska Research Council, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Individual items at this repository

  • Whitman Archive Title: American literature must become distinct
  • Whitman Archive ID: rut.00010
  • Repository ID: Ac.605
  • Date: Between 1845 and 1855
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript includes ideas similar to those found in the 1855 prose preface to Leaves of Grass , suggesting that the date is likely before or early in 1855. Floyd Stovall suggests that some of Whitman's ideas in this manuscript came from an article entitled "Thoughts on Reading" that appeared in the American Whig Review in May 1845 ("Notes on Whitman's Reading," American Literature 26.3 [November 1954]: 352). The manuscript is held at Rutgers University Library along with several similar manuscripts that are numbered sequentially and probably date from around or before 1855: see "dithyrambic trochee" (rut.00022), "The only way in which" (rut.00023), "The money value of real" (rut.00024), and "ground where you may rest" (rut.00025).
  • Whitman Archive Title: The only way in which
  • Whitman Archive ID: rut.00023
  • Repository ID: Ac.605
  • Date: Between 1845 and 1860
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Edward Grier suggests that this manuscript was probably written prior to 1860, noting some similarities in language and sentiment between it and the initial line of No. 4 of the "Thoughts" cluster published first in the 1860–1861 edition of Leaves of Grass ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:118). The erased final line of the manuscript is also similar to language that appears in the preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass . The manuscript is held at Rutgers University Library along with several similar manuscripts that are numbered sequentially and probably date from around or before 1855: see "American literature must become distinct (rut.00010)," "dithyrambic trochee" (rut.00022), "The money value of real" (rut.00024), and "ground where you may rest" (rut.00025).
  • Whitman Archive Title: dithyrambic trochee
  • Whitman Archive ID: rut.00022
  • Date: Between 1846 and 1860
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
  • Content: This manuscript consists of notes about various poetic meters, with Whitman writing the derivation of the term, a description of the meter, and then providing an example of a poetic line employing that meter. The example for hexameter (at the bottom of leaf 1 recto) is taken from a line in Homer. Whitman marked this line in an article published in an 1846 issue of the American Whig Review ("Translators of Homer" American Whig Review 4, no. 1 [July 1846]: 364). Thus, the date of this manuscript is after 1846. The manuscript is held at Rutgers University Library along with several similar manuscripts that probably date from around or before 1855. In his transcription of the manuscript, Edward Grier includes an additional section copied from Richard Maurice Bucke's Notes and Fragments . See Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts , ed. Edward F. Grier (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 1:355–356.
  • Whitman Archive Title: The money value of real
  • Whitman Archive ID: rut.00024
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This prose note, discussing the relationship between monetary value and "the human spirit," has no known connection to Whitman's published work. The material on the back of the leaf, which was included in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass , suggests that the manuscript was written before 1855. The manuscript is held at Rutgers University Library along with several similar manuscripts that probably date from around or before 1855. This prose note has no known connection to Whitman's published work. The material on the back of the leaf, which was included in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass , suggests that the manuscript was likely written before 1855. The manuscript is held at Rutgers University Library along with several similar manuscripts that are numbered sequentially and probably date from around or before 1855: see "American literature must become distinct" (rut.00010), "dithyrambic trochee" (rut.00022), and "The only way in which" (rut.00023).
  • Whitman Archive Title: ground where you may rest
  • Whitman Archive ID: rut.00025
  • Repository ID: Ac.605
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Genre: poetry, prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript fragment includes several lines of prose that became, after slight revision, lines of poetry in the initial poem of the 1855 Leaves of Grass (ultimately titled "Song of Myself"). The lines that appear in the poem begin with "Sit awhile wayfarer" and continue through the end of the manuscript, ending with "and open the gate for your egress hence." These lines remained, with minor revisions, through all the various versions of "Song of Myself." The manuscript is held at Rutgers University Library along with several similar manuscripts that are numbered sequentially and probably date from around or before 1855: see "American literature must become distinct" (rut.00010), "dithyrambic trochee" (rut.00022), and "The only way in which" (rut.00023).
  • Whitman Archive Title: Hush'd be the camps to-day
  • Whitman Archive ID: rut.00001
  • Repository ID: Ac. 545
  • Date: about 1865
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 4 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
  • Content: Draft of "Hush'd Be the Camps To-day," first published in Drum-Taps (1865). A revised version was included in the 1871–72 and subsequent editions of Leaves of Grass. Three of the leaves on which the manuscript is written are smaller and were formerly pasted to the fourth, larger leaf.
  • Whitman Archive Title: [more quarters--having been lost in MS]
  • Whitman Archive ID: rut.00009
  • Repository ID: Ac.546
  • Date: 1874
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: The recto of this item contains a draft of portion of "'Tis But Ten Years Since (Third Paper)," one of six pieces about the Civil War that Whitman published in the New York Weekly Graphic in January and February, 1874. In 1875, these pieces were gathered and republished as Memoranda During the War . The portion of the article that Whitman was drafting here is a short note that appeared at the end of the third installment, informing readers that even though these articles were written as a series, "each paper is, for the casual reader's purposes, complete in itself." This text was not found in any of the other articles and was not included in Memoranda During the War . The third installment appeared on 14 February 1874. The manuscript on the verso did not contribute to any known published piece.
View All Works
Back to top