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I am a Student

About This Item

  • Title: I am a Student
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: uva.00238
  • Source: Papers of Walt Whitman (MSS 3829), Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Albert H. Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia. Transcribed from digital images of the original. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. Lines in the manuscript are similar to sentences used in the preface to that edition. Ideas expressed in the manuscript also relate loosely to lines in the first poem in the 1855 edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself."
  • Related Item(s):
    • Lines written on the back of this manuscript leaf appeared in the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself." See uva.00570.
    • See wwa.00085.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "I am a Student." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: uva.00238.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
  [begin leaf 1 recto] I am ^a a Student, free of all a vast limitless Library; it is they are —it is ^limitless and eternally 
  open to me; It is The books are written in numberless tongues,—always 
  perfect, always and alive; Those He They aredo not own the libraryies who have  
  bought the buy the books and can sell them 
  again, I am the owner of the libraryies, for I read  
  ev read every page, and enjoy the 
  meaning of the same   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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