About this Item

Title: The money value of real

Creator: Walt Whitman

Date: Between 1850 and 1855

Whitman Archive ID: rut.00024

Source: Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.

Editorial note: This prose note has no known connection to Whitman's published work. The material on the back of the leaf, which was included in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, suggests that the manuscript was likely written around 1855. The manuscript is held at Rutgers University Library along with several similar manuscripts that are numbered sequentially and probably date from around or before 1855: see "American literature must become distinct," "dithyrambic trochee," and "The only way in which."

Related item: On the back of this note is a manuscript fragment with several lines of prose that were included, with slightly-revised wording, as lines of poetry in the initial poem of the 1855 Leaves of Grass, ultimately titled "Song of Myself." See rut.00025.