About this Item

Title: Why need genius and the

Creator: Walt Whitman

Date: About 1855

Whitman Archive ID: med.00741

Source: The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, ed. Edward F. Grier (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 4:1590. Grier based his text on Notes and Fragments, ed. Richard Maurice Bucke (London, Ontario: A. Talbot & Co., printers, 1899), 103. The location of this manuscript is unknown. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.

Editorial note: The content of this manuscript, which is known only from a transcription published by Richard Maurice Bucke in Notes and Fragments (1899), appeared in slightly revised form in the prose preface to the 1855 first edition of Leaves of Grass. The date of composition is therefore probably just before 1855.