A Whitman Chronology

Introduction

INTRODUCTION For the scholar or general reader interested in the life and work ofa particular writer, two circumstances can be equally daunting. One is finding very little material available; the other is finding what might be considered too much. In the case ofWalt Whitman, we can only rejoice at the richness of resources available, both primary and secondary, though the very richness can make difficult the task ofselecting what to read. Whitman's life was both long and productive, and the accumulation ofmaterials began with the poet himself, who oversaw six editions and numerous reprints and reissues of his major opus, Leaves ifGrass; produced prose works that included a novel, short stories, essays, and newspaper articles ; and left notebooks and a correspondence of almost three thousand extant letters. This high level of output was continued by his most i=ediate circle of friends, some of whom became his biographers while he was still living, and by his literary executors, one ofwhom - Horace Traubel - kept such detailed records of his conversations with the poet that they have yielded nine volumes. Twentieth-century scholars have built upon Whitman's own foundation by editing the notebooks and correspondence , the early fiction and poems, and the journalism. Reexaminations and reevaluations of his life and work continue to appear, and some of the later ones cast doubt on the earlier, as, for instance, the current questions about whether some of the journalistic writings were actually written by Whitman. The public's consciousness of Whitman has been further raised in recent years as a result of the commemoration in 1992 of the centenary of his death. An outpouring of essays, books, and conference proceedings and the publication in 1993 of two monumental works by Joel Myerson, Walt Whitman: A Descriptive Bibliography and The Walt Whitman Archive: A Facsimile if the Poet's Manuscripts, have enriched Whitman studies beyond measure . The recurring question of the poet's homosexuality has also spurred new interest, yielding valuable insights often published through scholarly outlets unfamiliar to the general reader. The intent of this book is to provide to the scholar and general reader alike a year-by-year and, to the extent verifiable , day-by-day account of selected events of Whitman's private and public life, to point out areas of major critical or scholarly disagreement, and to refer the reader to sources for further study. No claim is made for the exhaustibility of the information, for there are many details that do not appear in this chronology. Not all visits and correspondence to and by the poet are noted, but all those considered likely to be of importance to scholarship are. Not every meal taken with friends is listed, but I include as many as are meaningful in conveying a sense of the life here chronicled. Attention has been paid to items that pertain to Whitman's work, his primary relationships - with family, friends, and admirers - and the national issues and events that shaped his life. Perhaps most important, this book aims to make more accessible information that has been not just building but often sprawling at a considerable rate. Accessibility also dictated the decision not to rely directly on the resources ofthe Feinberg Collection in the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library's Oscar Lion Collection , or any of the existing Whitman collections in this country or abroad. Rather, the reader is referred, in almost all cases, to the published sources which, in turn, cite collections . Unpublished manuscripts can be found in Myerson 's The Walt Whitman Archive. Volume 1 of the Archive reproduces facsimiles from the Library of Congress collection amassed by Charles E. Feinberg (the largest trove of Whitman materials in the world); volume 2 reproduces the manuscripts at Duke University (especially good for manuscripts of "Song of Myself"); volume 3 reproduces the manuscripts at the University of Virginia (especially strong in poems from the 1860 edition of Leaves ifGrass). The task of compiling the chronology was facilitated by Whitman's almost daily (from the time he went to Washington , D.C.) correspondence; hence, there is a heavy reliance on this source, which is supplemented by his notebooks and [xl INTRODUCTION creative writings. Individual letters are noted if they are significant or if, as in the case of some of those written during the Civil War, they are representative of many similar letters. In editing Whitman's correspondence, Edwin Haviland Miller...