Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was born on May 31, 1819, to a large, working-class family in Long Island. However, when Whitman was just four years old the family relocated to the growing city of Brooklyn. By the age of eleven he had finished his formal education and started work as a labourer. His first paid position was the role of office boy for a group of prominent Brooklyn lawyers, who gave him a subscription to a circulating library. Whitman subsequently became an avid reader, and would frequently visit the cities museums, self-educating himself across a variety of disciplines through the developing public resources of America's fastest growing city. Throughout his adult life he worked in a variety of different roles: teacher, printer, and writer, contributing to newspapers and magazines across the United States. During the American Civil War (1861-1865) he volunteered as a nurse, working amongst the wounded in field hospitals. This experience influenced his wartime poems Drum Taps (1865), and his later autobiographical prose work Specimen Days (1882).
Walt Whitman, from Ohio Wesleyan University, Bayley Collection via The Walt Whitman Archive
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| # | Resource Title | Description | Contributor |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | Victorian Poetry and Fiction | The years 1837-1901 in which Queen Victoria reigned were highly influential in the development of… | Charlotte Barrett |
| 12 | The Celebration of Nature in Victorian Poetry | Despite the publication of Darwin's radical text On the Origin of Species (1859),which… | Charlotte Barrett |
| 13 | Walt Whitman | From The Walt Whitman Archive https://whitmanarchive.org/ Date: Late 1860s Place: Unknown,… | |
| 14 | Blue Book Copy of Leaves of Grass [1860] | Page images of Walt Whitman’s personal copy of the 1860 Leaves, known as the “Blue Book,” with… | |
| 15 | Walt Whitman | Walt Whitman, poet; half-length, seated, wearing hat. ca. 1860 - ca. 1865 | |
| 16 | Walt Whitman | Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was born on May 31, 1819, to a large, working-class family in Long Island… | Charlotte Barrett |
| 17 | Science and Religion | At the beginning of the nineteenth century, William Paley published Natural Theology (1802… | Charlotte Barrett |