Walt Whitman’s Notebooks

Ms. Clearman

English Language Arts

Walt Whitman

• American Poet, journalist, essayist, humanist

• May 31, 1819 – March 29, 1892

• Transcendentalism and Realism

Whitman’s Notebooks

• Used notebooks like most of us “regular” people– Recorded literary lecture notes– Drafts of poems– Wrote about national events (Lincoln’s

assassination)– Wrote down the thoughts of wounded soldiers

on the battlefield

Notebook Cover

Whitman’s notebooks cont.

• Earlier entries included brainstorming regarding possible future articles

• Some notebooks were massive collages in which he cut out pictures and pasted them onto a page

Page of notebook

Whitman’s Notebooks Cont.

• Who found these notebooks?

– Thomas B. Harned – Many universities have

collections of his notebooks also:

• Duke University • Yale University• New York Public

Library

Lost Notebooks

• Many of the pages turned up missing

• Why? – No one knows

• Find out more about Whitman’s lost pages at loc.gov

Work’s Cited

• Picture 1

• Picture 2 http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=whitman&fileName=wwhit080.data&recNum=0&Layout=Unscaled

• Picture 3 http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/whitman/080/080020a.jpg

• Picture 4 http://img.flipkart.com/bk_imgs/015/9781410222015.jpg

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/i?pp/ils:@field(NUMBER+@band(cph+3b24247)):displayType=1:m856sd=cph:m856sf=3b24247