Whitman held an array of roles on various newspapers and magazines from the early 1830s, when he was a printer's apprentice on the Long Island Patriot, until his death in 1892. Over those sixty years, Whitman set type, owned, edited, and wrote for local newspapers, and published both prose and verse in magazines and newspapers. During Whitman's lifetime, more readers encountered his work in periodicals than in any of his books. The recent discovery of lengthier periodical writings—such as the 1852 serialized novel Jack Engle and the 1858 "Manly Health and Training" series—has forced scholars to reassess previous assumptions about when and to what extent Whitman devoted his time to periodical writing, while at the same time reasserting the importance of periodicals to Whitman's career.
The Archive presents page images and transcriptions of Whitman's poems and fiction that appeared for the first time in periodicals. We also offer page images and full-text transcriptions of a growing collection of Whitman's journalism, most recently providing access to nearly 800 editorials from the Brooklyn Daily Times likely authored by Whitman in the late 1850s. In addition, we provide editorials likely authored by Whitman during his tenure as editor of the New York Aurora, several of Whitman's early journalistic series, a curated selection of his art reviews for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, his 1858 series "Manly Health and Training," and a large collection of his Civil War journalism. These all appear in the "Editorials and journalistic articles" section below. Further additions to this section are forthcoming.