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Editorial note: Based on the handwriting, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to the 1840s or early 1850s (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:160).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."
Contributors to digital file: Kirsten Clawson, Janel Cayer, Kevin McMullen, Nicole Gray, Kenneth M. Price, and Regan Chasek
In the present state of Nothing is society & literature nothing is more singular than to be without singularity[illegible], and nothing more eccentric than to be entirely sane & without eccentricity