Skip to main content

Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in the Walt Whitman Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin

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.




Individual items at this repository

  • Whitman Archive Title: After all, not to create only
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00069
  • Folder: bv1
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: about 1871
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 29 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56
  • Content: Draft of the poem "After all, Not to Create Only," written for the opening of the fortieth Annual Exhibition of the American Institute in 1871 and published on 7 September 1871 in both the New York Commercial Advertiser and the New York Evening Post. It was reprinted in several newspapers and as a pamphlet, After All, Not to Create Only (1871); as "Song of the Exposition" in Two Rivulets (1876); and with some revisions in Leaves of Grass (1881–82). Sheets from the pamphlet were included in some copies of the 1871 Leaves of Grass. A note at the top of the manuscript, written by Whitman's friend William Sloane Kennedy, indicates that it was used as printer's copy for the pamphlet publication.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Americans are charged with disproportionate brag and]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00003
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: 1
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: 1819-1872
  • Genre: poetry, prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A paragraph, heavily revised, expressing the opinion that the United States is the culmination of human development. A note at the bottom of the sheet, "As a Strong Bird," may refer to the poem "As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free," which was first published in the New York Herald on 26 June 1872. Extracts from this poem also appeared in the Washington Evening Star on the same date, within a larger article on the commencement exercises at Dartmouth College. It more likely, however, refers to the slender volume in which the poem was published later that year, As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free. And Other Poems. This manuscript is probably part of an early draft of the preface for that volume. The poem "As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free" was subsequently included in Two Rivulets (1876). After adding a new opening stanza and making additional revisions, Whitman incorporated the poem into Leaves of Grass (1881–82) under the new title "Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood." The preface was reprinted, with minor changes, as "Preface, 1872, to 'As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free'" in the 1892 volume Comple Prose Works .

  • Whitman Archive Title: ['Animals,' says George Eliot]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00091
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: 5
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: undated
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Three manuscript leaves and two newspaper clippings pasted to a larger backing sheet. All but one of the scraps presents an aphorism attributable to someone other than Whitman. The other, also aphoristic, is fragmentary but appears to be a draft line of verse. According to Edward F. Grier, the handwriting in the first and third paragraphs is that of the 1850s or 1860s; that of the second one seems to be the looser, more irregular writing of the 1870s.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Bravo, Paris Exposition!
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00082
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: undated
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, proof with handwritten corrections
  • View Images: 1
  • Content: "Bravo, Paris Exposition!" was published in Harper's Weekly 33, 28 September 1889. It was reprinted in Good-Bye My Fancy (1891) and in Leaves of Grass (1891–1892). According to a letter from Whitman to R. M. Bucke, this poem was also reprinted in the French paper "Le Temps." This proof has been pasted down to a backing sheet, rendering the verso inaccessible.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Idea of a Poem]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00025
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: 5
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: undated
  • Genre: poetry, prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1
  • Content: Notes, approximately forty words, toward a poem of "celebration of the superiority of the night," perhaps related to the poem eventally titled "Night on the Prairies," first published in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass as No. 15 in the "Leaves of Grass" cluster. This manuscript has been pasted down to a backing sheet and the verso is inaccessible.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [It is among these]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00090
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: 5
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: It is among these, or some one of these…
  • Date: undated
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Two small scraps pasted together. On one side is a sentence describing Whitman's visits in Civil War hospitals, probably drafted for Memoranda During the War (1875–76). On the reverse are three words/fragments of words, which bear an uncertain relationship to Whitman's published writing.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Scintillations
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00115
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 4
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: Scintilla
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft of several partial lines or trial titles, the relation of which to Whitman's published work is not known.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Shakspere-Bacon's Cipher
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00083
  • Box: bv2
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: Shakespeare-Bacon's Cipher
  • Date: undated
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, proof with handwritten correction
  • View Images: 1
  • Content: Page proof with handwritten corrections. This poem first appeared as "Shakspere Bacon's Cipher" in The Cosmopolitan 4 (October 1887): 142. It was reprinted in Good-Bye My Fancy (1891) under the title "Shakspere-Bacon's Cipher." An image of the verso is forthcoming.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Shakspere-Bacon's Cipher
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00084
  • Box: bv2
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: Shakespeare-Bacon's Cipher
  • Date: undated
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, proof with handwritten correction
  • View Images: 1
  • Content: Proofs with handwritten corrections and additions. The poem first appeared as "Shakspere Bacon's Cipher" in The Cosmopolitan 4 (October 1887): 142. It was reprinted in Good-Bye My Fancy (1891) under the title "Shakspere-Bacon's Cipher."

  • Whitman Archive Title: Thanks in Old Age
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00087
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 6
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: Thanks in Old Age
  • Date: undated
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, proof with handwritten comment
  • View Images: 1
  • Content: Proof with handwritten note about publication date by Whitman.

  • Whitman Archive Title: To change the book--go over the whole…
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00047
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 6
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: undated
  • Genre: poetry, prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This note of approximately fifty words contains Whitman's exhortation to himself to make "the book," presumably Leaves of Grass , "more intensely the poem of Individuality."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [write a poem on the theme]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00056
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 6
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: Write a poem on the theme the great charge and repulse of the Secesh…
  • Date: between 1864 and 1890
  • Genre: poetry, prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten; printed
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Short handwritten note, approximately twenty words, accompanying two pasted-down newspaper clippings. It is unknown which newspaper or newspapers published these items. The accounts describe Major General Winfield Scott Hancock's repulse of the charge led by Major General George E. Pickett at Gettysburg. No definitive connections between this manuscript and Whitman's published work have been established.

  • Whitman Archive Title: The questions involved is curious
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00451
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: The questions involved is are curious to discuss
  • Date: Between 1840 and 1860
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript deals with "Poetry fit for the New World," an idea Whitman pondered from the earliest stages of his poetic career. Edward Grier notes that the "handwriting and subject matter suggest an early date" ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 4:1589).

  • Whitman Archive Title: And to me each minute
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00057
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 1
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: Song of Myself
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was preparing materials for the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass . The manuscript includes lines that relate to the prose preface and to several of the poems in that edition, including the poems eventually titled "Song of Myself," "To Think of Time," and "A Song for Occupations." The manuscript also includes lines that relate to the manuscript poem "Pictures,"" which probably dates to the mid- to late 1850s. Notes about the arrangement and production of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass are written on the back of this manuscript.

  • Whitman Archive Title: A Soul Duet
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00014
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 4
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: probably before 1855
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Heavily revised draft of a poem unpublished in Whitman's lifetime. The regular, rhymed structure and pious theme suggest a date before the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855.

  • Whitman Archive Title: left with Andrew
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00001
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 1
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: Song of Myself
  • Date: 1854 or 1855
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript shows a listing of the poems for the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass , with working titles, as well as various mathematical calculations relating to the length and arrangment of the volume. It was likely composed in 1854 or early in 1855. Ed Folsom has written at length about this manuscript and its significance. See "Walt Whitman's Working Notes for the First Edition of Leaves of Grass ," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 16 (Fall 1998), 90–95. A series of draft lines on the back of this manuscript (tex.00057) relate to several of the poems that appeared in the first edition of Leaves of Grass .

  • Whitman Archive Title: armies & navies pass on the surface
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00005
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: 1
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: About the 1850s or 1860s
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript, probably written in the 1850s or 1860s, contains approximately five lines toward a poem about the effects of war that is not known to have been published in Whitman's lifetime. On the reverse side of the leaf (tex.00467) are two sentences or lines, one headed "Locust," and the other headed "Sunflower," which may have contributed to a piece of Civil War-era journalism.

  • Whitman Archive Title: I am become a shroud
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00030
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 1
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass . Lines in the manuscript are drafts of lines in the first and fourth poems of that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself" and "The Sleepers." On the back of this manuscript is a prose fragment containing phrases that later became part of the poem "Unnamed Lands," first published in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass .

  • Whitman Archive Title: Do you know what music
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00088
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: 4
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: An Essay on the Soul
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: 3 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
  • Content: This manuscript was probably written between 1850 and 1855, when Whitman was preparing material for his first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass . A portion of the first paragraph of the manuscript, dealing with music and its relationship to the soul, is similar to a passage in the poem eventually titled "A Song For Occupations." Other language in the manuscript is similar to the prose preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass and to lines from the poems that would eventually be titled "Song of Myself" and "I Sing the Body Electric."

  • Whitman Archive Title: I know many beautiful things
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00031
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 1
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript between 1850 and 1855, as he was composing the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass . Ideas and phrases from the manuscript appear in the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself." This manuscript also includes lines and phrases that appear in other manuscripts. See loc.00387 ("Lofty sirs") and loc.00163 ("Rule in all addresses").

  • Whitman Archive Title: Pictures
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00042
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 4
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: Pictures
  • Date: between 1850 and 1867
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Poetry manuscript titled "Pictures," approximately six lines, heavily revised. The first few lines of this manuscript appeared, further revised, in "The Runner," first published in the 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass . The middle section of the manuscript is possibly related to "Song of the Banner at Daybreak," which was first published in 1865 in Drum-Taps . A different version of last the two lines of the manuscript appear in another poetry draft, also titled "Pictures," now in Yale University's Beinecke Library. The writing on the verso is not Whitman's.

  • Whitman Archive Title: You villain, Touch
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00002
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 1
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: Song of Myself,
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Genre: poetry, prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass . The manuscript includes drafts of lines used in the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself." The prose drafted on the back of this and several other related manuscript leaves includes ideas and phrases that resemble those used in "Unnamed Lands," a poem published first in the 1860–1861 edition of Leaves of Grass .

  • Whitman Archive Title: Locust whirring they come in July
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00467
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: 1
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: About the 1850s or 1860s
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript contains two written statements or observations, one about locusts and the other about sunflowers. Although the text is written with the hanging indentation characteristic of Whitman's poetry, it is unclear if these were ever intended as poetic lines. The note about locusts—" Locust whirring they come in July & are loud in August"—is similar to a description of Washington, D.C., in a piece of Civil War journalism titled "Washington in the Hot Season." In this article, published in the New-York Times on August 16, 1863, Whitman writes of the grounds around the U.S. Capitol building in the summertime and notes that there are "locusts whirring." Whether this manuscript directly contributed to this piece of journalism or not, it seems likely that it was composed in the 1850s or 1860s. On the reverse of the leaf (tex.00005) are approximately five lines toward a poem about the effects of war that was never published in Whitman's lifetime.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Advance shapes like his shape
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00028
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 1
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: Between 1854 and 1860
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: The ellipses would suggest that this is an early manuscript, probably written in the mid- to late-1850s. It is an adaptation of notes Whitman took about Egypt, almost certainly from his reading of Sir John Gardner Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians , 3 vols. (London: John Murray, 1837). Related information about Sesostris appears on page 29 of the first volume in Wilkinson's collection, though Whitman may have been reading a different edition. Whitman used the information in his article "One of the Lessons Bordering Broadway: The Egyptian Museum," published in Life Illustrated on December 8, 1855. Similar descriptions of Sesostris appear in several of Whitman's other notes and manuscripts, including "Immortality was realized" and "Abraham's visit to Egypt," two sets of manuscript notes about Egypt that Edward Grier dates to between 1855 and 1860 ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 5:1922; 6:2022); and the notebook "women," including the fragments from that notebook that Whitman reused to create the larger page "Chronological."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [All tends to the soul]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00059
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 6
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: about 1860
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Draft of a poem about the relationship of the soul to the material world. This manuscript contributed to the poem "Proto-Leaf," which was first published in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass and eventually titled "Starting from Paumanok."

  • Whitman Archive Title: [off, dim and filmy in their outlines]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00460
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 1
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: between 1855 and 1860
  • Genre: poetry, prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Prose fragment, showing moderate revision, of approximately 150 words. Phrases and ideas from this manuscript were incorporated in the poem "Unnamed Lands," first published in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass . The manuscript on the reverse, tex.00030, was probably written earlier, as it contributed to a poem first published in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass and eventually titled "The Sleepers."

  • Whitman Archive Title: I cannot guess what the
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00079
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 6
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass . The lines do not have any known direct relation to Whitman's published poetry. At one point, however, the manuscript was almost certainly part of "The Great Laws do not" (duk.00264), which includes draft lines that appeared in that edition. On the back of this leaf (tex.00321) is a partial draft of the poem eventually titled "Faces." Both manuscript drafts were probably originally continuous with manuscript drafts on the leaf from which this leaf was cut.

  • Whitman Archive Title: waited their due time to
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00321
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 6
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass . The manuscript is a partial draft of the sixth poem in that edition, eventually titled "Faces." Draft poetic lines are written on the back of the leaf (tex.00079). Both manuscript drafts were probably originally continuous with manuscript drafts on another leaf, from which this leaf was cut.

  • Whitman Archive Title: I do not expect to see myself
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00023
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: 5
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: I do not expect to see myself…
  • Date: 1870s
  • Genre: poetry, prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1
  • Content: Lightly revised manuscript fragment of approximately 42 words, written with hanging indentation and expressing a confidence in future popular acceptance. Connection with Whitman's published work is uncertain. Christopher Morley, in his foreword to the auction catalog Manuscripts, Autograph Letters, First Editions and Portraits of Walt Whitman (1936), writes that he believes that the manuscript "was written . . . on a piece scissored from left-over stock of the green wrappers and end-papers of the 1855 Leaves." The paper is actually more blue than green, however, and the handwriting is more consistent with a date in the 1870s, a period during which Whitman repeatedly complained about how he was treated by American magazines. This manuscript has been pasted to a backing sheet, and the verso is inaccessible.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Light & the senses abdicate]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00034
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 1
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: Light and the senses abdicate…
  • Date: probably about 1865
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript of approximately four heavily revised lines may have contributed to the poem "Chanting the Square Deific," first published in Sequel to Drum-Taps (1865–66).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [The ball-room was swept]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00011
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: 2
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: The Ballroom was swept and the floor white…
  • Date: about 1860
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Three lines of a poem beginning "The ball-room was swept, and the floor white." The relationship between these lines and Whitman's published poetry is unknown. On the verso is a fragment of an apparent letter, which Edwin Haviland Miller dates August 1860, to Thayer and Eldridge, concerning their loan to Henry Clapp of $200.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Who shall write]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00054
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 6
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: Who shall write--who tell--who paint…
  • Date: probably between 1855 and 1870
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Fragment of approximately forty words, in which the poet writes that if he "were younger & well" he would write a book containing "the lessons of one mere day and night—the picture of the sky." No connection has been established between this manuscript and any of Whitman's published works.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [I have heard spars]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00024
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: 5
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: about 1872
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Two lines, with revisions, possibly related to the poem "The Mystic Trumpeter," which was first published in the February 1872 issue of The Kansas Magazine . It also appeared in As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free (1872), Two Rivulets (1876), and subsequent editions of Leaves of Grass.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Poem of The Woods
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00043
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 4
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: Poem of the Woods
  • Date: probably between 1860 and 1880
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Notes toward a poem to be titled either "Poem of the Woods" or "Poem of the Prairies," intended for a "Chicago edition" that never materialized. Any relationship between this manuscript and Whitman's published work is unknown. The notes are written on the back of a page from Sartain's Magazine , which folded in 1852.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Poem of Triumph
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00032
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 1
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: Poem of Triumph
  • Date: probably between 1860 and 1880
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Prose notes, draft lines, and trial titles for a poem or perhaps several poems about a triumphant attitude toward approaching death. One of the notes shows that Whitman considered writing a poem that would include a list of what poems are yet wanted. No relationship is known between this manuscript and Whitman's published work.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [The Epos of Democracy]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00019
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: 4
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: The epos of democracy…
  • Date: about 1865
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1
  • Content: Heavily revised draft of approximately five lines. Connections between this manuscript and Whitman's published work are uncertain, but the lines bear some resemblance to the poem "Ashes of Soldiers," first published in Drum-Taps in 1865. This manuscript is pasted down and no verso image is available.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Write A Drunken Song
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00055
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 6
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: Write a drunken song…
  • Date: probably between 1860 and 1875
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Note containing twelve words, wherein Whitman suggests writing "A Drunken Song." The relationship of this manuscript to Whitman's published work is unknown.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [O I think I could not be the]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00040
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 3
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: O I think I could not be the solid land…
  • Date: between 1861 and 1865
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1
  • Content: Approximately four draft lines, showing a moderate amount of revision, for the poem "Song of the Banner at Daybreak," first published in 1865 in Drum-Taps and reprinted, with revisions, in subsequent editions of Leaves of Grass.

  • Whitman Archive Title: The Army Hospitals
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00288
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: 1863
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Partial manuscript draft of an essay about the Civil War army hospitals. From its relationship with another manuscript now at the University of Virginia (tex.00097), it is clear that this manuscript represents a prepublication stage of the article "The Great Army of the Sick," which was published in the New-York Times on February 26, 1863. Whitman later used a part of the published article (a part that has no parallel in the present manuscript) for the one-paragraph description of the "Patent Office Hospital" in Memoranda During the War (1875–76), labelled " Feb. 23. " The paragraph later appeared as "Patent-Office Hospital" in Specimen Days & Collect (1882–1883) and in Complete Prose Works (1892). Whitman's revision of the title (which he made by cutting the top of the leaf, turning it over, and writing a new title) indicates both that he originally imagined this to be the first of a series of articles and that the present manuscript was intended to serve as a printer's copy.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [to start upon]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00247
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: between 1864 and 1874
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1
  • Content: This manuscript fragment was originally part of a larger leaf which comprised two other fragments as well: tex.00308 and tex.00297. Before the sheet was cut into three pieces, this fragment formed the lower part. The writing it contains is related to a section headed "Fifty Army Hospitals Here—1863—Spring," a section of the article "'Tis But Ten Years Since. (Fourth Paper.)," published in the New York Weekly Graphic on February 21, 1874. Further revised, it was later published in Memoranda during the War (1875–76) as "Hospital Perplexity." This was reprinted in Two Rivulets (1876), Specimen Days & Collect (1882–83), and Complete Prose Works (1892).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [to start upon]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00297
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: between 1864 and 1874
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript fragment was originally part of a larger leaf which comprised two other fragments as well: tex.00308 and tex.00247. Before the sheet was cut into three pieces, this fragment formed the upper part. The writing it contains is related to a section headed "Specimen of the Army Hospitals Now in and around Washington" in "Our Wounded and Sick Soldiers," an article published in the December 11, 1864 issue of the New York Times. Whitman also used this material in "Still More of the Hospitals," a section of the article "'Tis But Ten Years Since. (Fourth Paper.)," published in the New York Weekly Graphic on February 21, 1874. Further revised, it was later published in Memoranda during the War (1875–76) as "Aug., Sep., and Oct., '63—The Hospitals." This was reprinted, unchanged, in Two Rivulets (1876). Finally, it appeared as "Hospitals Ensemble" in Specimen Days & Collect (1882–83) and in Complete Prose Works (1892). It is uncertain whether Whitman created this manuscript as he drafted material for the 1864 article or wrote it as he worked to synthesize earlier pieces for the "'Tis But Ten Years Since" series, though the latter scenario is more likely.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [They are frequently changed]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00308
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: between 1864 and 1874
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This manuscript fragment was originally part of a larger leaf which comprised two other fragments as well: tex.00297 and tex.00247. Before the sheet was cut into three pieces, this fragment formed the middle part. The writing it contains is related to a section headed "Fifty Army Hospitals Here—1863—Spring," a section of the article "'Tis But Ten Years Since. (Fourth Paper.)," published in the New York Weekly Graphic on February 21, 1874. Further revised, it was later published in Memoranda during the War (1875–76) as "Hospital Perplexity." This was reprinted in Two Rivulets (1876), Specimen Days & Collect (1882–83), and Complete Prose Works (1892).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [hear outside the orders given]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00012
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 1
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: about 1865
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Five partly cropped lines from a draft of the poem "A March in the Ranks Hard-Pressed, and the Road Unknown," first published in Drum-Taps in 1865. The manuscript on the reverse side, tex.00461, is perhaps related to the essay "The Real War will never get in the Books," published in Specimen Days (1882–83).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [The bivouac does not the voice of]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00461
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 1
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: between 1865 and 1883
  • Genre: poetry, prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Two lines of verse, with revisions. The relation of these lines to Whitman's published poetry is uncertain, though in concept and imagery they echo a passage from "The Real War will never get in the Books," a prose piece that appeared in Specimen Days (1882–83). There, the poet writes that the war was not a quadrille in a ball-room. The lines on the other side of the leaf, tex.00012, are for the Drum-Taps (1865) poem "A March in the Ranks Hard-Pressed, and the Road Unknown."

  • Whitman Archive Title: For Dem Vistas
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00458
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: 1882 or before
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: A brief paragraph suggesting that the unifying motif of a projected volume of miscellaneous prose pieces should be various aspects of nature viewed from the perspective of democracy. Although Whitman eventually titled his collection Specimen Days (1882–83), the present manuscript uses the working title "Mulleins & Bumble Bees," one of many that he considered over the rather long period during which he contemplated publication. In "Cedar-Plums—Names," one of the short essays in the collection, he discusses some of his difficulties with coherence and titling.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [I do not feel to write]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00228
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: 5
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: I do not feel to write…
  • Date: about 1867
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: This prose fragment, heavily revised, is almost certainly part of the draft material that contributed to the essay eventually titled Democratic Vistas, published as a pamphlet in 1871. This long essay was originally organized as a series of three shorter pieces, The first two of which were published in The Galaxy , under the titles "Democracy" (December 1867) and "Personalism" (May 1868).

  • Whitman Archive Title: [Is it enough to keep on importing]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00232
  • Box: 1
  • Folder: 5
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: Is it enough to keep on importing the first class production…
  • Date: between 1868 and 1870
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1
  • Content: Prose manuscript fragment, written on a small scrap of paper, apparently from the drafting sessions that produced Democratic Vistas, which was first published at the end of 1870 (though dated 1871). Because the scrap is pasted to a backing sheet, no image of the verso is available.

  • Whitman Archive Title: [for introductory to]
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00251
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: probably between 1868 and 1876
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Fragmentary draft of an introductory essay that was apparently never published. The note at the top suggests that it was intended for some version of Democratic Vistas, which was first published in 1871, or of Memoranda during the War, which was first published in 1875–76. The idea expressed in this manuscript occurs frequently in Whitman's published writings, though never in these particular phrases.

  • Whitman Archive Title: Proud Music of the Sea-Storm
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00063
  • Box: bv10
  • Folder: 1
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: Proud Music of the Sea-Storm
  • Date: about 1869
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 9 leaves, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18
  • Content: Printer's copy of "Proud Music of the Sea-Storm," published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1869. In subsequent printings, the title was altered to "Proud Music of the Storm."

  • Whitman Archive Title: Proud Music of the Sea-Storm
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00102
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 2
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Repository Title: Proud Music of the Sea-Storm
  • Date: 1869
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, folio proof
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Folio proof of "Proud Music of the Sea-Storm" with the handwritten annotation "Atlantic Monthly, February."

View All Works
Back to top