About this Item

Title: names

Creator: Walt Whitman

Date: Between 1850 and 1881

Whitman Archive ID: yal.00015

Source: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript 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on the handwriting, Edward Grier dates the notes about names of various tribes of people to the 1850s (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 5:1663). The name and address written in pencil were added later, likely in 1881, when Whitman visited Boston several times, first to deliver a lecture and then to oversee the production of the 1881 edition of Leaves of Grass. Although Whitman also visited Boston in 1860, John Soule's photography studio did not move to 338 Washington Street, the address that Whitman lists, until the 1870s.