The Walt Whitman Archive
Commentary
Selected Criticism
This section of the Archive offers a selection of current criticism and historical commentary. In addition to several essays reprinted with permission, we feature more than 20 full-length books. Kenneth M. Price, Ed Folsom, and Matt Miller have been successful in retaining electronic rights to their volumes published by the University of North Carolina Press, the University of Nebraska Press, and Blackwell Publishing. We have also secured permission from the University of Iowa Press to put online most volumes from the Whitman series directed by Folsom. We are grateful to each of these publishers for their generosity. Back issues of the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review are also available in full text via our searchable bibliography, and 754 entries from Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia are available here.
We encourage scholars in the future to negotiate with their publishers about retaining electronic rights to their work (or at least electronic rights jointly held by the writer and by the journal or press). It is our hope that this section of the Archive will grow significantly as we secure copyright releases to more works of criticism. We strongly urge scholars to retain electronic rights by filling out a SPARC addendum to contracts, allowing for the retention of electronic rights. The well-worded addendum that can be attached to contracts is at http://www.arl.org/sparc/author.
Books
- Allen, Gay Wilson, and Ed Folsom, ed. Walt Whitman & the World (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995). PDF
- Asselineau, Roger. The Evolution of Walt Whitman: An Expanded Edition (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999). PDF
- Belasco, Susan, Ed Folsom, and Kenneth M. Price, ed. Leaves of Grass: The Sesquicentennial Essays (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007). PDF
- Blake, David Haven, and Michael Robertson, ed. Walt Whitman, Where the Future Becomes Present (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2008). PDF
- Buinicki, Martin T. Walt Whitman's Reconstruction: Poetry and Publishing between Memory and History (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2011). PDF
- Erkkila, Betsy, ed. Walt Whitman's Songs of Male Intimacy and Love: "Live Oak, with Moss" and "Calamus" (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2011). PDF
- Folsom, Ed. Whitman Making Books/Books Making Whitman (Iowa City: Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, 2005). HTML
- Folsom, Ed, and Kenneth M. Price. Re-Scripting Walt Whitman (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005). HTML
- Folsom, Ed, ed. Walt Whitman: The Centennial Essays (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994). PDF
- Folsom, Ed, ed. Whitman East & West: New Contexts for Reading Walt Whitman (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002). PDF
- Gerhardt, Christine. A Place for Humility: Whitman, Dickinson, and the Natural World (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014). PDF
- Grünzweig, Walter. Constructing the German Walt Whitman (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995). PDF
- Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. Walt Whitman and the Earth: A Study in Ecopoetics (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2004). HTML PDF
- Krieg, Joann P. Walt Whitman & the Irish (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000). HTML PDF
- Krieg, Joann P. A Whitman Chronology (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998). PDF
- Lawson, Andrew. Walt Whitman & the Class Struggle (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2006). PDF
- Levin, Joanna, and Edward Whitley, ed. Whitman among the Bohemians (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014). PDF
- Mack, Stephen John. The Pragmatic Whitman (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002). HTML PDF
- Martin, Robert K, ed. The Continuing Presence of Walt Whitman: The Life after the Life (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992). PDF
- Miller, Edwin Haviland. Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself": A Mosaic of Interpretations (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989). PDF
- Miller, Matt. Collage of Myself: Walt Whitman and the Making of Leaves of Grass (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010). PDF
- Myerson, Joel, ed. Whitman in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Memoirs, and Interviews by Friends and Associates (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000). PDF
- Pavese, Cesare. Interpretation of the Poetry of Walt Whitman, Honors Thesis (University of Turin, 1930), translated and with an introduction by Lawrence G. Smith (© Smith 2023; The Walt Whitman Archive, 2023). PDF
- Price, Kenneth M. To Walt Whitman, America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). HTML
- Schmidgall, Gary, ed. Intimate with Walt: Selections from Whitman's Conversations with Horace Traubel, 1888–1892 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2001). PDF
- Schmidgall, Gary, ed. Conserving Walt Whitman's Fame: Selections from Horace Traubel's Conservator, 1890–1919 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2006). PDF
- Thomas, M. Wynn. Transatlantic Connections: Whitman U.S. / Whitman U.K (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2005). PDF
- Whitman, Walt. The Correspondence, vol. 7, ed. Ted Genoways (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2004). PDF
- Whitman, Walt. Selected Letters of Walt Whitman, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990). PDF
- Wilson, Ivy, ed. Whitman Noir: Black America and the Good Gray Poet (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014). PDF
Articles
- Corona, Mario. "The Furtive Hen and the Cat Whose Tail Was Too Long: On Whitman's Traces." HTML
- Folsom, Ed. "'A spirit of my own seminal wet': Spermatoid Design in Walt Whitman's 1860 Leaves of Grass." PDF
- Helms, Alan. "Whitman's 'Live Oak with Moss'." HTML
- Helms, Alan, and Hershel Parker. "Commentary." HTML
- Jewell, Andrew, and Kenneth M. Price. "Twentieth-Century Mass Media Appearances." HTML
- Murray, Martin G. "Pete the Great: A Biography of Peter Doyle." HTML
- Murray, Martin G. "Traveling with the Wounded: Walt Whitman and Washington's Civil War Hospitals." HTML
- Nelson, Robert K., and Kenneth M. Price. "Debating Manliness: Thomas Wentworth Higginson, William Sloane Kennedy, and the Question of Whitman." HTML
- Parker, Hershel. "The Real 'Live Oak, with Moss': Straight Talk about Whitman's 'Gay Manifesto'." HTML
- Price, Kenneth M. "Love, War, and Revision in Whitman's Blue Book." PDF
- Santayana, George. "Walt Whitman: A Dialogue." HTML