About this Item

Title: In the present state of

Creator: Walt Whitman

Date: Between 1850 and 1855

Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00061

Source: The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library. Transcribed from digital images of the original. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.

Editorial note: Based on the handwriting, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to the 1840s or early 1850s (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:160). The manuscript may relate to a self-published review of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass that Whitman wrote for the August 29, 1855, issue of the Brooklyn Daily Times. In the review, titled "Walt Whitman, A Brooklyn Boy," Whitman describes the book's author as "one in whom you will see the singularity which consists in no singularity."