About this Item

Title: Jan 12. Walter Whitman

Creator: Walt Whitman

Date: January 12, 1842

Whitman Archive ID: med.00723

Source: The transcription presented here is derived from Florence Bernstein Freedman, Walt Whitman Looks at the Schools (New York: King's Crown Press, 1950), photostat facing page 33. The location of the original visitors' book is unknown. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.

Editorial note: This note was written by Whitman in a visitors' book for Manhattan Public School #13. Whitman's entry is one of several on the page. The entry is dated January 12, and it can be inferred from the surrounding dates that the year is 1842. Whitman had also visited the school the previous year (see med.00724). Although he had worked in Long Island as a school teacher from 1839 to early 1841, Whitman had moved to Manhattan in May 1841 and was working as a journalist (Gay Wilson Allen, The Solitary Singer, rev. ed. [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985], 34–42). In August 1841, he had published a short story about a cruel schoolmaster, "Death in the School-Room," in The Democratic Review.