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The Elder Brother of the

About This Item

  • Title: The Elder Brother of the
  • Date: Before or early in 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: med.00911
  • Source: The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, Notes and Fragments, ed. Richard Maurice Bucke (London, Ontario: A. Talbot & Co., [printer], 1899), 46. The location of this manuscript is unknown. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: Because the manuscript has not been located it is difficult to speculate on the circumstances of its composition, but it is possible that it was written in the early 1850s as Whitman was preparing materials for the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. The phrasing and imagery are reminiscent of a line in the first poem in that edition (eventually titled "Song of Myself"), suggesting that this manuscript was composed before or early in 1855.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "The Elder Brother of the." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: med.00911.xml (TEI)

Key

Textual Feature Appearance
Overwritten brown with strikethrough
Added inline purple with double underline
Uncertain gray with wavy underline
Supplied from another source turquoise with brackets
Metamark green with triple underline
Long deletion gray background with top and bottom border
The Elder Brother of the soul—my soul.
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