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Birth and Early Childhood
Print Shop Image Website.Walt Whitman was born in Long Island, New York into a Quaker household. His father was a carpenter, but from an early age Walt was involved in the printing and writing businesses. -
Early Writing Experiences
Photo of Thomas Jefferson being beaten in the Aurora. Between the ages of 21 and 23, Whitman had much experience with writing newspaper articles and had interrupted his small foray into teaching with starting a paper and then moving to Manhattan to write and speak at Democratic rallies. He was editor of the <i>Aurora</i> until he was fired for laziness. -
First Novel
Website for Book Cover Image.<i>Franklin Evans, or the Inebriate</i>
Published in the <i>New World</i>. A temperance novel. -
The Brooklyn Eagle
Article from the paper. Became editor of the paper and wrote the literary reviews of writers such as Emerson, Melville, and Goethe, among many others. -
Travel and Education
The Brooklyn Freeman image. After being fired from the <i>Eagle</i>, Whitman traveled to New Orleans and then came back to Brooklyn where he served as a delegate to the Buffalo Free-Soil convention. It was around this time that Whitman began to write poetry more as a serious endeavor than a pasttime. He also worked as a carpenter and contractor, but continued to further his education and writing. -
Leaves of Grass 1st Edition
Image of Leaves of Grass inside cover. Whitman took out an copyright on what would become his greatest work and growing selection of poems. Leaves of Grass contained about 12 poems and included his preface that declared himself to be the American bard. The book was bound in green cloth and featured a rather proud and common-looking Whitman inside. -
Civil War
Image of officers during the Civil War.Whitman visited the wounded, including his own brother George, and worked in an open-air hospital to care for the injured in Washington, D.C. He grew despondent in 1864 due to the overwhelming death and called them "the dead, the dead, the dead, <i>our</i> dead." Which prompted him to write war poems about "real war" in his <i>Drum-Taps</i> collection published in 1865. -
Lincoln's Assassination
Image of Abraham Lincoln.After Lincoln's death, Whitman wrote "O Captain! My Captain!" and "Where Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" in honor of the murdered president and included them in the next issuing of <i>Drum-Taps</i>. -
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Popular Notice Increase
From the 1870s to the 1880s, Whitman became increasingly more popular in the literary world. Despite his illness, he lectured and met with other poets and writers of his time such as Emerson, Longfellow, and Oscar Wilde. Opposition to the supposed immorality of his poetry was in decline and his works became publicly acclaimed. He was at the height of his popularity. -
Illness
Old wheelchair image. A paralytic stroke left Whitman infirm and he lost his mother not too long after that incident. -
The End
Mausoleum image. It cost $4,000. Walt Whitman was buried in a mauseleum of his own design in Harleigh Cemetery after seeing the final preparations for his "deathbed" edition of <i>Leaves of Grass</i> published that same year.
