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Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in the Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Processed by: Melissa Delbridge and Daniel Breen; machine-readable finding aid created by: Michael Shumate and Elizabeth Arnold; revised and expanded by the Walt Whitman Archive and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. Encoded Archival Description completed with the assistance of the Gladys Kreible Delmas Foundation, the University of Nebraska Research Council, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.


Title: Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in the Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Creator:  Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892


Repository:  Duke University

Abstract:
This catalog is a revised and enriched document based upon the original created by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University, and obtained by the Walt Whitman Archive. The original papers and catalogue records are held at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

Scope and Content: 
The bulk of Duke University's Walt Whitman holdings were acquired through a series of substantial donations made by Dr. and Mrs. Josiah C. Trent, from whom the Trent Collection of Whitmaniana takes its name. Much of the Trent material was originally gathered by Richard Maurice Bucke, Whitman's friend and literary executor, who sold manuscript versions of his biography of Whitman, along with his collection of unpublished letters and Whitman's personal papers and books, in London in 1935. The next year, Jacob Schwartz offered for sale in New York a large portion of the Whitman holdings that had belonged to Bucke, and many of the items listed in the catalogue of this sale were a part of the original donation made to Duke by Dr. and Mrs. Trent in 1942. The Trent family made several important additions to their initial bequest in the years following the establishment of the collection, but Duke University does not expect its Whitman manuscript holdings to expand at any time in the near future.

The Trent Collection of Whitmaniana incorporates material spanning the dates 1841-1947, with the bulk of the material dated 1845-1849, 1854-1857, and 1864-1892. The virtual reorganization of the collection, based upon that devised by Ellen F. Frey in A Bibliography of Walt Whitman (1945; rpt. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1965), divides it into six series: Correspondence, Writings, Clippings, Material About or Relating to Whitman, Portraits, and Miscellany.

Although the Trent Collection contains a wide variety of Whitman material, this catalog deals only with those items deemed poetry or prose manuscripts.

Biographical Information:
For additional biographical information, see "Walt Whitman," by Ed Folsom and Kenneth M. Price, and the chronology of Whitman's Life.

Subjects:
Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892;  Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892—Manuscripts; Poets, American—19th century



Whitman Archive Title: 'The Scout'
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00276
Repository ID: MS q 29
Date: about 1855 or later
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Manuscript suggesting "The Scout" as a good title for a poem, magazine, or newspaper. No connection to Whitman's published work is known. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "And there," "Drops of my Blood," and "In a poem make the."



Whitman Archive Title: (Of the great poet)
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00128
Repository ID: MS q 69
Date: About 1855
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 3 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
Content: This manuscript includes notes that anticipate the preface to the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. Images and phrases in the second paragraph of the first leaf are reminscent of lines in both the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself" and the poem eventually titled "I Sing the Body Electric." Another line on the first leaf appeared in a slightly different form in "Poem of The Singers, and of The Words of Poems" in the 1856 edition of Leaves (a poem later titled "Song of the Answerer"). The stated desire for "satisfiers" and "lovers" (found here on the bottom of the second leaf) appears in "Poem of Many in One," also first published in the 1856 edition and later titled "By Blue Ontario's Shore."



Whitman Archive Title: (written for the voice)
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00272
Repository ID: MS q 29
Date: about 1860
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Manuscript note apparently recording the poet's early idea for the poem first published as "Chants Democratic 20" in 1860, later as "I Hear America Singing." This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "And there a hunter's camp," "Poem of "(the Devil," and "Poem of Sadness."



Whitman Archive Title: ? Gliding through these the three
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00022
Repository ID: II-5 17
Date: 1870
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A fragment describing street and interior scenes similar to those in "Outlines for a Tomb." "Outlines for a Tomb" was first published in The Galaxy in January 1870 under the title "Brother of All, with Generous Hand," and finally in 1881 under the title "Outlines for a Tomb."



Whitman Archive Title: ? Poem of the Husband
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00281
Repository ID: MS q 31
Date: 1860 or before
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: List of ideas for poems about "the husband," "the wife," and "marriage." This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "A poem which more."



Whitman Archive Title: A Word about Tennyson
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00151
Repository ID: MS q 49
Date: 1886-1887
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 7 leaves, handwritten, print
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14
Content: A complete draft of Whitman's essay "A Word About Tennyson," which was first published in the Critic on January 1, 1887. The piece would later appear in the English edition of Democratic Vistas and Other Papers (1888), as well as November Boughs (1888) and Complete Prose Works (1892). Whitman has numbered the pages and included a note to the printer at the top of the first leaf.



Whitman Archive Title: A main part of the greatness
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00152
Repository ID: Box III-6A
Date: about 1857
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: Handwritten notes about the ceaseless progression of humanity, most likely written in 1857. The scrap contains notes written in prose, with two poetic lines about the same subject written at the bottom of the page. The connection of these lines to any of Whitman's published poetry is unknown. An image of the verso is not available.



Whitman Archive Title: A man of gigantic
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00293
Repository ID: MS q 32
Date: Before or early in 1855
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Prose fragment containing words and ideas similar to segments of the 1855 poem that was eventually titled "Song of Myself." Edward Grier also connects the image of the heroic male and the "flowing grandeur of a man" to the poems that make up the 1855 Leaves (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:178). On the reverse is another prose fragment (duk.00888) dealing with the importance of independent thinking amid social forces of law and custom, as well as describing the attributes of a "perfect" man.



Whitman Archive Title: A nation announcing itself
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00030
Repository ID: MS q 14
Date: 1855 or 1856
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A manuscript draft of the opening passage of "Poem of Many in One," first published in the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass. The final title of the poem, "By Blue Ontario's Shore," first appeared in the 1881/1882 edition of Leaves. The reverse side of this leaf (duk.00886) contains both prose and verse that appears to be a draft of "Salut Au Monde!"



Whitman Archive Title: A poem in which is
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00299
Repository ID: MS q 33
Date: 1856 or before
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Notes for a poem about "a first-rate healthy Human Body," possibly related to "I Sing the Body Electric," which was first published as the fifth poem of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass and substantially revised (as "Poem of the Body") in 1856.



Whitman Archive Title: A poem theme
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00707
Repository ID: Box II-5B 102
Date: 1850-1860
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten, print
View images: 1
Content: A green scrap of paper with a brief note about a potential theme for a poem: "Be happy." Below the note is pasted a newspaper clipping with a story attributed to Aristotle. There is no known connection between the note or the clipping to Whitman's published poetry or prose. An image of the verso is unavailable.



Whitman Archive Title: A poem which more
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00280
Repository ID: MS q 31
Date: 1845–1892
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Manuscript note for a poem addressing Whitman's future readers. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "? Poem of the Husband."



Whitman Archive Title: Africa (The Equator
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00686
Repository ID: Box II-5B 103
Date: 1855-1856
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Content: Grouped with a collection of notes about Africa and Asia, these two leaves contain notes about geographic locations and features, mostly in Africa. Many of the place names are included in the 1856 poem "Poem of Salutation," later retitled "Salut Au Monde!" At least two longer lines from the manuscript also find their way into that poem: "fresh-sunned Mediterranean, and from one to another of its islands" (becoming "clear-sunned" in the poem) and "black venerable vast mother, the Nile."



Whitman Archive Title: After all is said and
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00797
Repository ID: MS q 3
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: The second paragraph of this prose manuscript contains lines which appeared in a slightly altered form in the first poem of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. The poem was later divided into numbered sections and titled "Song of Myself"; the lines here appeared in section 4. The second paragraph also bears a distant resemblance to a line in the poem eventually titled "Faces" and to a line in the poem eventually titled "Song of the Answerer." The reverse side of this manuscript leaf (duk.00007) contains lines related to other sections of "Song of Myself."



Whitman Archive Title: All that we are
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00023
Repository ID: II-5 21
Date: undated
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Draft of fifteen lines of poetry, first published only after Whitman's death in Notes and Fragments (1899). The last three lines on this manuscript leaf appear in another version in a long manuscript, "Pictures," which probably dates to the 1850s and is held at the Beinecke Library, Yale.



Whitman Archive Title: America needs her own poems
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00131
Repository Title: "America needs her own poems, in her own body and spirit"
Date: early 1860s
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This brief and heavily revised prose manuscript treats an idea that interested Whitman throughout his career, namely, that America requires its own "freer, more muscular" poems rather than "superb chronicles" with "smooth rhymes" imported from Europe. The manuscript, however, bears no clear connections to any specific published work. This manuscript probably dates to the early 1860s, as it appears to have been inscribed after the writing on the reverse side of the leaf (duk.00795), which contains draft lines that contributed to poems first published in the 1860–1861 edition of Leaves of Grass.



Whitman Archive Title: An After Thought or Two
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00286
Repository ID: MS q 31
Date: 1855 or later
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Manuscript title, apparently for a group of poems, never used in Whitman's published work. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "Poem, as in a rapt and," and "Poem ante-dating."



Whitman Archive Title: And I have discovered them
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00006
Repository ID: MS q 1
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: The draft lines on one side of the manuscript leaf contributed to the opening poem of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. In the poem's final version, "Song of Myself," these lines are found in section 48. The poem was first titled "Poem of Walt Whitman, an American" in the 1856 edition, and Whitman shortened the title to "Walt Whitman" in 1860–1861. The final title was not introduced until the 1881–1882 edition of Leaves. It is not known whether the prose on the leaf's reverse (see duk.00003) is related to any of Whitman's published work; however, physical and thematic similarities with "And I have discovered them by night and by," above, and "My tongue can never be content with harness," below, make a connection with the 1860 poem "Unnamed Lands" likely.



Whitman Archive Title: And now I care not to
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00031
Repository ID: MS q 195
Date: about 1860
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This manuscript is an early draft of a portion of the opening poem of the "Calamus" cluster in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. Beginning in the 1867 edition and for all subsequent editions the poem was titled "In Paths Untrodden." The reverse (duk.00814) contains a list of suggestions of titles for poems or clusters of poems, including "The States," "Prairies," "Prairie Spaces," "Prairie Babes," and "American Chants."



Whitman Archive Title: And there
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00275
Repository ID: MS q 29
Date: between 1850 and 1860
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Fragment describing a "negro at daylight" giving "the Carolina yell," possibly related to the poem first published in 1856 as "Poem of Salutation" and later titled "Salut Au Monde!" Based on the handwriting, Edward Grier dates this manuscript fragment to the 1850s (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:313). This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "'The Scout'," "Drops of my Blood," and "In a poem make the."



Whitman Archive Title: And there a hunter's camp
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00271
Repository ID: MS q 29
Date: about 1860
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: On one side are two lines, heavily corrected, from a draft of the poem first published in 1860 as "Chants Democratic 4" and eventually titled "Our Old Feuillage." On the other side are two lightly corrected lines with an uncertain connection to Whitman's published poetry. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "(written for the voice)," "Poem of "(the Devil," and "Poem of Sadness."



Whitman Archive Title: Are the prostitutes nothing
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00889
Repository ID: MS q 11
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This manuscript includes a line beginning "Are the prostitutes nothing?" which is a draft of a line from the third poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, eventually titled "To Think of Time." The words "attraction of gravity," included in a crossed-out line in this manuscript, appear in two contexts in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. The closest in meaning to its use in this manuscript is in the poem later titled "Great Are the Myths": "It cannot be varied by statutes, any more than love, pride, the attraction of gravity, can" (1855, p. 251). "Great Are the Myths" was ultimately shortened to a few lines and published as "Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night" in the 1881 Leaves of Grass. On the reverse (duk.00032) is also an early version of a part of "Great Are the Myths."



Whitman Archive Title: Asia
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00886
Repository ID: MS q 14
Date: About 1855 or 1856
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This manuscript contains notes and draft lines that are related to a poem published first as "Poem of Salutation" in the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass and later as "Salut Au Monde!" Whitman's use of the word "tabounshic" in this manuscript is unusual. He used it (spelled "tabounschik") only in the 1855 and 1856 editions of Leaves of Grass in the poem eventually titled "A Song for Occupations." In other respects, however, that poem does not appear to be related to these notes. The reverse side of the leaf (duk.00030) contains draft lines of the poem that was eventually titled "By Blue Ontario's Shore."



Whitman Archive Title: Banjo Poem
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00290
Repository ID: MS q 31
Date: 1845–1892
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Scrap with just two words, apparently a trial title. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "Poem L'Envoy," "Poem [?The Cruise]," and "of Death—the song."



Whitman Archive Title: Bill Guess
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00887
Repository ID: MS q 5
Date: March 20, 1854
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This manuscript contains notes about the characters and physical traits of three men: Bill Guess, Peter [no last name given], and George Fitch. Whitman has dated the manuscript March 20th, 1854. Edward Grier notes that the name "Bill Guess" does not appear in New York directories from this time period. Two entries for "George Fitch" are listed in the New York City directory for 1855–56. One Fitch is listed as an expressman, and the other is listed as a clerk. Grier postulates that "the three young men mentioned here were probably itinerant omnibus drivers" (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:199). On the reverse (duk.00051) is a manuscript draft related to what eventually became section 41 in the final version of "Song of Myself."



Whitman Archive Title: Bloom
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00294
Repository ID: MS q 32
Date: 1856 or before
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Leaf made from two scraps glued together. The bottom scrap contains notes toward "Song of the Broad-Axe," which was first published in Leaves of Grass 1856 as "Broad-Axe Poem." The writing on the top scrap, which describes one of Whitman's acquaintances, might have informed the description of the "headsman" in that poem.



Whitman Archive Title: Books, as now produced
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00112
Repository Title: "[Notes on Literature] (in Frey)"
Date: Undated
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: Based on the handwriting, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to the 1850s (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 4:1594). Grier speculates that Richard Maurice Bucke, one of Whitman's literary executors, may have received this manuscript pinned together with several others on the same theme (4:1603). The manuscript is pasted down, so an image of the verso is unavailable.



Whitman Archive Title: Breath and Spray
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00306
Repository ID: MS q 33
Date: 1860 or before
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: List of what appear to be possible titles for volumes or clusters of poems.



Whitman Archive Title: Broadaxe
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00033
Repository ID: II-5 12
Date: about 1856
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Notes written in three separate columns about the uses and history of the broadaxe. "The Broad-Axe Poem" first appeared in Leaves of Grass (1856), taking the title "Song of the Broad-Axe" in 1867.



Whitman Archive Title: Bunsen
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00200
Date: 1856 or before
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Content: Notes on Africa. Whitman used some of the place names and a version of one of the phrases here ("The fresh-sunned Mediterranean, and from one to another of its islands") in the 1856 "Poem of Salutation," which was eventually titled "Salut au Monde!"



Whitman Archive Title: Camden - Phila
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00121
Repository ID: MS f 47
Date: 1884
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A manuscript which contains lines similar to those found at the beginning of "Additional Note, 1887, to English Edition 'Specimen Days.'" The note was originally titled "Additional Note. Written 1887 for the English Edition" and included in the second (English) edition of Specimen Days. The note would later be reprinted in Complete Prose Works. The date on the manuscript, however, indicates that it was written in 1884 and likely intended for inclusion in a proposed two-volume edition of poetry and prose to be published in 1884. The edition never materialized. On the reverse of the manuscript is a note by William Sloane Kennedy.



Whitman Archive Title: Carols Closing Sixty-Nine
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00056
Repository ID: MS q 20
Date: about 1888
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A manuscript of suggestions for the title of a collection of poetry which eventually appeared under the heading "Sands at Seventy" in the 1888 volume of poetry and prose entitled November Boughs. The title "Carols Closing Sixty-Nine" appears here as one of the possible names for this collection. The reverse of this document contains the underlined words "Sands at Seventy" and a cancelled note reading "for annex to the preced," which corresponds to ideas expressed on the recto.



Whitman Archive Title: Caution
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00154
Repository ID: MS 4 to 196 (Volume 196)
Date: Between 1855 and 1860
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Edward Grier and Richard Maurice Bucke date this manuscript to the 1850s (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, ed. Edward F. Grier [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 4:1588; Notes and Fragments, ed. Richard Maurice Bucke [London, Ontario: A. Talbot & Co., printers, 1899], 67–8). Because the fragmentary draft material on the back of the leaf (duk.00945) relates to an 1855 review, this manuscript was almost certainly written in or after 1855.



Whitman Archive Title: Chronological
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00066
Date: Between 1854 and 1860
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, with 2 pasted-on attachments, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This manuscript consists of a backing sheet with two smaller manuscript scraps pasted on, which together, at one time, likely formed part of Whitman's cultural geography scrapbook. The pasted-on manuscript scraps were originally part of the notebook "women" (loc.05589), which probably dates from about 1854 to about 1860. Prose notes written on the back of the bottom paste-on (duk.00878) relate to what became section 2 of "I Sing the Body Electric," first published as the fifth poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. Both manuscript scraps were probably written shortly before or early in 1855, though the notes on the backing sheet to which they have been pasted may have been written at a later date.



Whitman Archive Title: Companions
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00284
Repository ID: MS q 31
Date: About 1860
Genre: prose, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Jotted idea for a series of poems about Whitman's various companions. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "Poem of Young Men."



Whitman Archive Title: Drops of my Blood
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00277
Repository ID: MS q 29
Date: about 1860
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A manuscript that contains a list of trial titles, probably for the poem first published as "Calamus 15" in Leaves of Grass (1860) and eventually titled "Trickle Drops." On the reverse (duk.00890) is a fragment of about two and a half lines of poetry, heavily corrected, whose relationship to Whitman's published writing is unknown. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "And there," "'The Scout'," and "In a poem make the."



Whitman Archive Title: Europe
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00884
Repository ID: MS 12mo 27
Date: Between 1850 and 1856
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A list of European rivers, lakes, and cities, many of which were included in "Poem of Salutation" in the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass. In the 1860 edition of Leaves, and in all subsequent editions, the poem was titled "Salut Au Monde!" On the reverse (duk.00029) are poetic lines that may relate to the first edition of Leaves.



Whitman Archive Title: Give us men
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00877
Date: Before or early in 1855
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This manuscript is an adaptation of notes Whitman took about Egypt, almost certainly based on his reading of Sir John Gardner Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, 3 vols. (London: John Murray, 1837). Related information about Sesostris appears on page 29 of the first volume in Wilkinson's collection, though Whitman may have been reading a different edition. Whitman used the information in his article "One of the Lessons Bordering Broadway: The Egyptian Museum," published in Life Illustrated on December 8, 1855. Similar descriptions of Sesostris appear in several of Whitman's other notes and manuscripts, including "Immortality was realized" (mid.00018) and "Abraham's visit to Egypt" (tex.00200) two sets of manuscript notes about Egypt that Edward Grier dates to between 1855 and 1860 (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 5:1922; 6:2022); the notebook "women" (loc.05589); and the poetic rendition "Advance shapes like his shape" (tex.00028). The manuscript is pasted to a larger document along with another scrap, the reverse of which (duk.00878) features prose notes that relate to what became section 2 of "I Sing the Body Electric," first published as the fifth poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. Both manuscripts were probably written shortly before or early in 1855, though the notes on the backing sheet to which they have been pasted may have been written at a later date.



Whitman Archive Title: Goethe
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00178
Repository ID: MS q 80
Date: 1856
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Content: Notes that Whitman made about Goethe. Unlike many of Whitman's other notes about authors, these notes seem to be based at least in part on his own observations rather than on secondary criticism. Some of the ideas contained in the scrap (particularly the final portion of the second leaf) found their way into Whitman's essay "American National Literature," which appeared in the North American Review in March 1891, under the title "Have We a National Literature?" It was later reprinted in Good-Bye My Fancy (1891), under the title "American National Literature" before finally appearing in Complete Prose Works (1892). Although the essay was not published until later, Edward Grier suggests that the manuscript dates from late 1856 (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984] 5:1827). Pasted on the reverse of the first page is a clipping from an article entitled "The True Character of Goethe."



Whitman Archive Title: Great are the myths
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00259
Repository ID: MS q 10
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: These lines are a draft of the following lines in the twelfth poem of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, a poem that was later titled "Great Are the Myths": "GREAT are the myths . . . . I too delight in them, / Great are Adam and Eve . . . . I too look back and accept them; / Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers, warriors and priests." (1855, p. 93). The poem went through many revisions through the different editions of Leaves of Grass, then was permanently dropped in 1881–1882, except the two couplets that became the poem "Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night." The reverse of the manuscript (duk.00938) has cancelled prose beginning "The true friends of the Sabbath."



Whitman Archive Title: Hands Round
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00024
Repository ID: MS q 24
Date: Between 1865 and 1881
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Content: A manuscript poem with a patriotic theme left unpublished in Whitman's lifetime.



Whitman Archive Title: Hannah Brush
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00698
Repository Title: Isaac Joseph Stephen Jesse (my grandfather)...
Date: Between 1850 and 1880
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Edward Grier tentatively dates the handwriting of this manuscript to the 1850s (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:16). The notes are similar to many of Whitman's other jottings about family in the 1850s and 1860s. At the repository this manuscript is bound with three other manuscript leaves and two newspaper clippings, also about members of Whitman's family. It is not clear whether Whitman or a collector bound the items, which are on different sizes and types of paper and appear to have been written at different times.



Whitman Archive Title: Health does not tell any
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00789
Date: Before or early in 1856
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This prose manuscript includes the line "Which is the poem or any book that is not diseased?" which appeared in a slightly altered form in "Poem of Many in One" in 1856. The poem, eventually titled "By Blue Ontario's Shore," was retained through subsequent editions of Leaves, although the line was dropped after 1860–1861.



Whitman Archive Title: How I get around at 60 and take notes
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00214
Repository ID: MS 123
Date: 1881
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 11 leaves, handwritten, print
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22
Content: A manuscript copy, with printer's instructions, of the first in a series of six articles that Whitman wrote for the Critic between January 1881 and July 1882, entitled "How I Get Around at 60, and Take Notes" (except for the sixth number, which was entitled "How I Still Get Around at 60, and Take Notes"). The article to which this manuscript contributed was published on January 29, 1881. A portion of the material for the article came from "Winter Sunshine," which Whitman had published in the Philadelphia Times a year earlier. The article was later broken up and reprinted in various places throughout Specimen Days (1882).



Whitman Archive Title: How gladly we leave the
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00296
Repository ID: MS q 32
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: The description of "boatmen" with "trowsers tucked in their boots" in this manuscript appears to be related to lines in the opening poem of the 1855 Leaves of Grass, eventually titled "Song of Myself": "The boatmen and clamdiggers arose early and stopped for me, / I tucked my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time". The phrase "real men and women refreshing, hearty, and wicked" may relate to the following line, which occurs later in the same poem: "Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing and wicked and real." These connections suggest a date before or early in 1855. Edward Grier claims that this manuscript was, at one time, pinned together with another manuscript (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:169; see duk.00297).



Whitman Archive Title: I am not content now
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00026
Repository ID: II-7 200
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: Manuscript of two lines, the first of which bears some resemblance to a line in the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself," beginning with "These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands" (1855, p. 24). An image of the verso is not available.



Whitman Archive Title: I am that halfgrown angry boy
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00027
Repository ID: MS q 25
Date: Before 1855
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Poetry manuscript left unpublished by Whitman, containing ideas potentially connected with the unpublished short story "Of a summer evening" (duk.00097). On the reverse (duk.00885) is a fragment of an essay regarding municipal legislation.



Whitman Archive Title: I do not compose
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00879
Repository Title: II. Song of Myself (Pages 1-23)
Date: About 1855
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This is a prose manuscript with an unknown connection to Whitman's published work, in which he compares writing to the composition of a "grand opera." The reverse side (duk.00787) contains lines that contributed to the poem ultimately titled "Song of Myself." In the repository, this manuscript is bound, seemingly by a collector, with a printer's copy of the 1881–82 edition of Leaves of Grass that contains numerous handwritten corrections by Whitman (duk.00098).



Whitman Archive Title: I know as well as
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00051
Repository ID: MS q 5
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A manuscript draft treating ideas about divine revelation. Lines from this manuscript appear in the first poem in the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. In its final version the poem was titled "Song of Myself," and the relevant lines appeared in section 41. The ideas and some of the language are also similar to other early manuscripts that relate to the second poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves, ultimately titled "A Song for Occupations," and part of a cluster titled "Debris" that appeared in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass (see loc.00013, uva.00251, and duk.00261). The reverse (duk.00887) contains notes, dated March 20th '54, about the characters and physical traits of several men that Whitman met in his travels.



Whitman Archive Title: I see who you are
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00263
Repository ID: MS q 8
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Draft lines, cancelled with a vertical strike, that appeared in the second poem of the 1855 Leaves of Grass, eventually titled "A Song for Occupations." The phrase "driver(s) of horses," a version of which appears in text added to a transcription of this manuscript in Notes and Fragments, ed. Richard Maurice Bucke (London, Ontario: A. Talbot & Co., printers, 1899), 31, appears in both the preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass and appears in its first poem, eventually titled "Song of Myself." On the reverse is one heavily corrected line whose relationship to the recto material or to any other published poem is uncertain.



Whitman Archive Title: In a poem make the
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00278
Repository ID: MS q 29
Date: before 1860
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Note for a poem to address the question "What will be the result of this years hence?" The note is possibly related to the poem "Recorders Ages Hence," first published in Leaves of Grass (1860) as "Calamus 10," and taking its final title in 1867. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "And there," "'The Scout'," and "Drops of my Blood."



Whitman Archive Title: In metaphysical points
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00159
Repository ID: MS 67
Date: Before or early in 1855
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: The wording and general idea of this prose manuscript anticipates lines in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, in the poem that was eventually titled "Song of Myself."



Whitman Archive Title: In the course of the
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00942
Repository ID: MS q 1
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Content: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. Several of the lines of poetry in this manuscript are drafts of lines used in the opening poem of that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself." The lines match the section of the poem that runs from "And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves" through "I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe . . . . and am not contained between my hat and boots" (1855, pp. 16-17). The reverse sides of the leaves, together with several other leaves, constitute a draft essay that perhaps contributed to the 1860–1861 poem Unnamed Lands (see duk.00003).



Whitman Archive Title: Isaac Joseph Stephen Jesse
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00703
Repository Title: Isaac Joseph Stephen Jesse (my grandfather)...
Date: Between 1850 and 1860
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Based on the handwriting, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to the 1850s (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:12). In the Walt Whitman Collection at Duke, this manuscript is bound with three other manuscript leaves and two newspaper clippings, also about members of Whitman's family. It is not clear, however, whether Whitman or a collector bound the items, which are on different sizes and types of paper and appear to have been written at different times.



Whitman Archive Title: It is no miracle now
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00007
Repository ID: MS q 3
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This manuscript draft may have contributed to lines in the poem that eventually would be titled "Song of Myself," which first appeared in Leaves of Grass (1855). The clearest relation is to the line: "A minute and a drop of me settle my brain" (1855, p. 33), but the lines about touch and death also relate to ideas in sections 6 and 27-30 of the final version of the poem. In the 1856 edition it was titled "Poem of Walt Whitman, an American," and Whitman shortened the title to "Walt Whitman" in 1860–1861. The final title, "Song of Myself," was not introduced until the 1881–1882 edition of Leaves. The reverse side of the leaf (duk.00797 contains prose writing related to a different section of the same poem.



Whitman Archive Title: It is the endless delusion
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00800
Repository ID: MS q 6
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This prose manuscript includes a thought similar to one from the poem that was eventually titled "Song of Myself." Whitman writes that "The noble soul steadily rejects any liberty or privilege or wealth that is not open on the same terms to every other man and every other woman." This idea is phrased more memorably in the first poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass—"By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms" (29)—suggesting a date for the manuscript of 1855 or earlier. Other ideas and words from this manuscript are similar to ideas and words that appeared in the preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass. See, for instance, the line: "the melancholy prudence of the abandonment of such a great being as a man is to the toss and pallor of years of moneymaking with all their scorching days and icy nights and all their stifling deceits and underhanded dodgings, or infinitessimals of parlors, or shameless stuffing while others starve . . " (1855, p. x). The reverse (duk.00261) contains ideas and language related to what eventually became section 41 of "Song of Myself."



Whitman Archive Title: It seems to me
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00302
Repository ID: MS q 33
Date: Between 1847 and 1855
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
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Content: Note expressing an admonition to avoid similes and ornament in poetry, possibly related to passages in the prose preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, which express similar sentiments. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "What shall the great poet be then?," "The most superb beauties," and "Make no quotations."



Whitman Archive Title: It were unworthy a live man to pray
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00162
Repository ID: MS q 203
Date: Before or early in 1855
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: An early scrap of prose material similar to parts of "Song of Myself," which first appeared as the opening poem in Leaves of Grass (1855). The manuscript's final three lines may have contributed to what became section 32, in which Whitman describes wanting to "live awhile with animals" because "[t]hey do not sweat and whine about their condition, / They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins." These lines were present in the first version of the poem in 1855, suggesting a date of before or early in that year.



Whitman Archive Title: Italian singers in America
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00139
Repository ID: MS 66
Date: 1858-1859
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 3 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
Content: A manuscript containing a fairly neat draft of what is likely a piece of journalism that was never published. The piece deals with Italian opera singers in New York, a subject about which Whitman had already written in an article entitled "The Opera," which appeared in Life Illustrated on November 10, 1855. As Edward Grier notes, the date of this manuscript is either late 1858 or 1859, as Marietta Piccolomini (a singer mentioned in the piece as being "the present 'rage'") only appeared in America during that opera season (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984] 1:396).



Whitman Archive Title: Leaves of Grass
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00053
Repository ID: MS 19
Date: about 1881
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 18 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16
Content: The handwritten Table of Contents of the 1881-1882 edition of Leaves of Grass with instructions to the printer. Also included is a proof of the title-page of the same edition, with Whitman's corrections.



Whitman Archive Title: Leaves of Grass
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00098
Repository ID: I-1
Date: about 1881
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 270 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | 95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 | 100 | 101 | 102 | 103 | 104 | 105 | 106 | 107 | 108 | 109 | 110 | 111 | 112 | 113 | 114 | 115 | 116 | 117 | 118 | 119 | 120 | 121 | 122 | 123 | 124 | 125 | 126 | 127 | 128 | 129 | 130 | 131 | 132 | 133 | 134 | 135 | 136 | 137 | 138 | 139 | 140 | 141 | 142 | 143 | 144 | 145 | 146 | 147 | 148 | 149 | 150 | 151 | 152 | 153 | 154 | 155 | 156 | 157 | 158 | 159 | 160 | 161 | 162 | 163 | 164 | 165 | 166 | 167 | 168 | 169 | 170 | 171 | 172 | 173 | 174 | 175 | 176 | 177 | 178 | 179 | 180 | 181 | 182 | 183 | 184 | 185 | 186 | 187 | 188 | 189 | 190 | 191 | 192 | 193 | 194 | 195 | 196 | 197 | 198 | 199 | 200 | 201 | 202 | 203 | 204 | 205 | 206 | 207 | 208 | 209 | 210 | 211 | 212 | 213 | 214 | 215 | 216 | 217 | 218 | 219 | 220 | 221 | 222 | 223 | 224 | 225 | 226 | 227 | 228 | 229 | 230 | 231 | 232 | 233 | 234 | 235 | 236 | 237 | 238 | 239 | 240 | 241 | 242 | 243 | 244 | 245 | 246 | 247 | 248 | 249 | 250 | 251 | 252 | 253 | 254 | 255 | 256 | 257 | 258 | 259 | 260 | 261 | 262 | 263 | 264 | 265 | 266 | 267 | 268 | 269
Content: Printer's copy for portions of the 1881-1882 edition of Leaves of Grass containing manuscript and printed pages with numerous corrections, additions, and instructions to the printer. A lock of Whitman's hair, enclosed in a wrapper, also appears with this collection.



Whitman Archive Title: Light and air
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00260
Repository ID: MS q 4
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. Language from the manuscript appears in the first poem of that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself." The phrase "light and air" also appears in the fourth poem of that edition, eventually titled "The Sleepers." The supplied first line, beginning "Under this rank coverlid," was added to a transcription of the manuscript that appears in Notes and Fragments, ed. Richard Maurice Bucke (London, Ontario: A. Talbot & Co., printers, 1899), 16. The line is not currently written on the manuscript.



Whitman Archive Title: Make no quotations
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00305
Repository ID: MS q 33
Date: Between 1847 and 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Notes, or possibly trial lines, articulating various beliefs about how to write. Edward Grier speculates, based on the style and content, that this manuscript probably dates to between 1847 and 1855 (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:159). This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "It seems to me," "What shall the great poet be then?," and "The most superb beauties."



Whitman Archive Title: Mother's family lived
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00205
Repository ID: MS f 128
Date: 1850
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A manuscript containing autobiographical notes about Whitman's family history. Although Whitman never published any of these notes in his lifetime, they were used, in some cases word for word, in the biographical introduction to the multi-volume The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman, edited by Whitman's three literary executors and published in 1902. Horace Traubel, Richard Maurice Bucke, and Thomas Harned are listed as the authors of the introduction. Large portions of the recto are used nearly verbatim, but only certain phrases from the verso. The finding aid from the repository lists the date of this manuscript as 1850.



Whitman Archive Title: Municipal legislation
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00885
Repository Title: I am that half grown angry boy
Date: Between 1840 and 1860
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Based on the handwriting, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to the 1840s or 1850s. He also notes that this manuscript did not contribute to the editorial entitled "Municipal Government" that appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Times on December 1, 1858 (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:345). On the reverse side (duk.00027) is a poetry manuscript containing ideas possibly connected to Whitman's unpublished short story "Of a summer evening."



Whitman Archive Title: My Spirit sped back to
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00262
Repository ID: MS q 7
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Some of the words and phrases in this manuscript appear in the first poem of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, eventually titled "Song of Myself." The manuscript also bears some resemblance to a line in the 1855 poem eventually titled "A Song for Occupations." The combination of "Love" and "Dilation or Pride" is also articulated in "Chants Democratic" (No. 4) in the 1860–1861 Leaves of Grass, later titled "Our Old Feuillage." The reverse contains one cancelled line: "Not one of the heroic guests."



Whitman Archive Title: My tongue can never be
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00008
Repository ID: MS q 1
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
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Content: On one side of the manuscript leaf are draft poetic lines similar in topic to lines from the opening poem of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, later titled "Song of Myself." The use of horse-related terms—"harness," "traces," "the bit"—may relate to the extended metaphor developed in following lines: "Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture fields, / Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away, / They bribed to swap off with touch, and go and graze at the edges of me, / No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger, / Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them awhile, / Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me" (1855, pp. 32–33). The prose drafted on the reverse includes ideas and phrases that resemble those used in "Unnamed Lands," a poem published first in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass.



Whitman Archive Title: O Mother, did you think
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00034
Repository ID: MS q 13
Date: about 1856
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 4 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
Content: On four leaves, an early version of portions of the poem ultimately titled "This Compost," first printed under the title "Poem of Wonder at The Resurrection of The Wheat" in the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass. On the reverse sides of these leaves is a list of words regarding the physical body and connected in concept to "I Sing the Body Electric," a poem that first appeared as the fourth poem of the 1855 Leaves of Grass. With this list, Whitman was gathering material for the noteworthy final section, a paean to body parts, that he added to the poem in 1856. Glue residue shows that these leaves were formerly pasted to two other leaves, upon which is written a prose manuscript fragment regarding California Vigilance Committees.



Whitman Archive Title: Of a summer evening a
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00097
Repository Title: Of a summer evening a boy fell asleep
Date: Before 1850
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 5 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
Content: Some of the language in this short piece of fiction also appears in the draft poem "I am that half-grown angry boy" (duk.00027). It is not possible to know with certainty whether Whitman wrote the prose or the poetic lines first. However, Whitman's usual practice of composition suggests that the prose preceded the verse. The prose is maudlin, sentimental, and conventional. The verse, though undeveloped, shows more evidence of experimentation, again suggesting a later stage in the composition process. Based on the handwriting, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to the late 1840s (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:46).



Whitman Archive Title: On the other side
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00241
Repository ID: MS q 206
Date: 1855-1858
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
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Content: A partial draft of what appears to be a self-review of Leaves of Grass. Whitman published numerous anonymous self-reviews throughout his life, and this scrap contains language similar to several extant reviews, in which Whitman references his own "barbaric yawp" and makes a clear distinction between that which is new and powerful (represented by his own poetry) from that which is old and stilted (previous poetic traditions). The time and location of publication is unknown, but Edward Grier notes that the Collins steamship line, which Whitman references, ceased operating in 1858, suggesting that this is likely a review for the 1855 or 1856 edition of Leaves (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984] 1:336).



Whitman Archive Title: Outdoors is the best antiseptic
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00297
Repository ID: MS q 32
Date: Before or early in 1855
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This prose fragment extols the virtues of outdoor living and the appeal of physical laborers who work outdoors. Similar ideas are found throughout Leaves of Grass. The following lines in the poem that was eventually titled "Song of Myself" echoes the first two sentences of this manuscript: "I am enamoured of growing outdoors, / Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods, / Of the builders and steerers of ships, of the wielders of axes and mauls, of the drivers of horses" (1855, p. 21). The first part of this prose fragment also may relate to the following line from the preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass: "The passionate tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early risers, cultivators of gardens and orchards and fields, the love of healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons, drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air, all is an old varied sign of the unfailing perception of beauty and of a residence of the poetic in outdoor people" (p. v). The transcription of the manuscript published in Notes and Fragments, ed. Richard Maurice Bucke (London, Ontario: A. Talbot & Co., printers, 1899), 152, includes additional text not now present in the manuscript that may also connect it to the following line in the poem eventually titled "I Sing the Body Electric": "Do you think they are not there because they are not expressed in parlors and lecture-rooms?" (1855, p. 81). Edward Grier claims that this manuscript was, at one time, pinned together with another manuscript (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:169; see duk.00296).



Whitman Archive Title: Perfect serenity of mind
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00044
Repository ID: MS q 194
Date: Before 1860
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A fragment of several lines, apparently written before publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855. One of the lines was included in the 1860 "Poem of Joys," which was later entitled "A Song of Joys."



Whitman Archive Title: Poem (bequeathing to others a charge) what poems are wanted
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00270
Repository ID: MS q 29
Date: 1860 or before
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: Manuscript with idea for a poem to include "a long list" drawn from other (unidentified) manuscript scraps. This fragment has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "Poem of Poets (now) in all lands." An image of the verso is unavailable.



Whitman Archive Title: Poem L'Envoy
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00289
Repository ID: MS q 31
Date: before 1860
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Note for a poem. It is unclear whether this manuscript is connected to any of Whitman's published poetry. The reverse contains a fragmentary set of notes for a game of "Twenty Questions." This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "Banjo Poem," "Poem [?The Cruise]," and "of Death—the song."



Whitman Archive Title: Poem [?The Cruise]
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00291
Repository ID: MS q 31
Date: 1860 or before
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Scrap with what are apparently two trial versions of a title. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "Poem L'Envoy," "Banjo Poem," and "of Death—the song."



Whitman Archive Title: Poem [As in Visions of]
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00258
Repository ID: MS q 30
Date: Between 1850 and 1860
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: Notes for a poem about night "visions," possibly related to the fourth poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, eventually titled "The Sleepers." Fragments of an unidentified newspaper clipping about the Puget Sound area have been pasted to the leaf. An image of the verso is not available.



Whitman Archive Title: Poem [There can be no greatest]
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00268
Repository ID: MS q 29
Date: 1860 or before
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Notes toward a poem comparing the progress of "the divine man" to the geological development of the earth, of which the connection to Whitman's published works is unknown.



Whitman Archive Title: Poem among the Siamese
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00050
Repository ID: MS 158
Date: 1854-1856
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten, print
View images: 1
Content: A leaf of paper with several clippings pasted to it, as well as handwritten comments by Whitman. The clippings deal with Siamese proverbs and poems, as well as "the absurd chronology of the Hindoos." Whitman's handwritten comment at the top of page indicates that he may have been considering a poem entitled "Poem among the Siamese". At the bottom of the page is a chunk of text which may be a draft poetic line or else notes about possible elements to include in the poem. An image of the verso is unavailable.



Whitman Archive Title: Poem ante-dating
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00288
Repository ID: MS q 31
Date: 1860 or before
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Manuscript idea for a poem that would prophesy the "great results" to be had "a hundred years hence." This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "An After Thought or Two" and "Poem, as in a rapt and."



Whitman Archive Title: Poem of "(the Devil
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00273
Repository ID: MS q 29
Date: 1865 or before
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This note for a poem about the devil is possibly related to the poem "Chanting the Square Deific," which was first published in 1865. The scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "And there a hunter's camp," "(written for the voice)," and "Poem of Sadness."



Whitman Archive Title: Poem of Existence
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00060
Repository ID: MS q 26
Date: Between 1850 and 1856
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Manuscript of poetic lines unpublished in Whitman's lifetime. Resemblances to passages in the preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass are perhaps evidence that these notes constitute draft material for that edition. Another possibility is that these notes represent an attempt to recast ideas from the preface into poetry—a process that Whitman used successfully to create several new poems for the second edition of 1856. The note at the top of the manuscript lends credence to the second theory, as it follows the characteristic title structure unique to the second edition, although Whitman never published a poem under the title "Poem of Existence."



Whitman Archive Title: Poem of Fruits & Flowers
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00255
Repository ID: MS q 30
Date: 1860 or before
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: Ideas for three different poems about various topics. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "Poem of Wisconsin." An image of the verso is unavailable.



Whitman Archive Title: Poem of Language
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00251
Repository ID: MS q 30
Date: 1860 or before
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: Manuscript containing ideas for a poem about the variety of languages and sounds. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "Whole Poem." An image of the verso is unavailable.



Whitman Archive Title: Poem of Materials
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00042
Repository ID: MS 12mo 15
Date: about 1860
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This manuscript contains notes for poetry, including phrases which appear in section 6 of the final version of"Starting from Paumanok" and in "Mediums." The published version of "Mediums," originally "Chants Democratic No. 16" in the 1860–1861 edition of Leaves of Grass, later appeared as part of "Passage to India" (1871–1872), and finally in the 1881–1882 edition of Leaves of Grass. "Starting from Paumanok" was published first in the 1860–1861 edition of Leaves of Grass as "Proto-Leaf." The reverse is a prose fragment dealing with political independence that contains phrases and ideas similar to those found in Whitman's complete but unpublished essay "The Eighteenth Presidency!"



Whitman Archive Title: Poem of Poets (now) in all lands
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00269
Repository ID: MS q 29
Date: 1860 or before
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Manuscript with notes for a poem to describe "the poetical sentiments in all lands," of which the connection to Whitman's published work is unknown. This fragment has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "Poem (bequeathing to others a charge) what poems are wanted."



Whitman Archive Title: Poem of Sadness
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00274
Repository ID: MS q 29
Date: about 1860
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: Manuscript note probably recording the idea for the 1860 poem "Leaves of Grass 17," which was ultimately titled "I Sit and Look Out." This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "And there a hunter's camp," "(written for the voice)," and "Poem of "(the Devil." An image of the verso is not available.



Whitman Archive Title: Poem of Wisconsin
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00308
Repository ID: MS q 30
Date: 1860 or before
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: List of ideas for poems, mostly about various states, including an allusion to a possible "Western Edition." This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "Poem of Fruits & Flowers," and an image of the verso is unavailable.



Whitman Archive Title: Poem of Young Men
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00285
Repository ID: MS q 31
Date: 1856 or before
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Manuscript with ideas for a poem, possibly "Salut Au Monde!" which was first published in 1856 as "Poem of Salutation." This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "Companions."



Whitman Archive Title: Poem of a proud
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00266
Repository ID: MS q 29
Date: before 1861
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: Manuscript with ideas for a poem of "joyous expression" about Manhattan, of which the connection to Whitman's published work is unknown. This fragment has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "The most Jubilant Triumphant Poem." An image of the verso is not available.



Whitman Archive Title: Poem of the Black Person
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00267
Repository ID: MS q 29
Date: 1860 or before
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Manuscript with ideas for a poem expressing the "sentiment" of a "sweeping . . . protection of the blacks." It seems that no such poem ever emerged.



Whitman Archive Title: Poem, as in a rapt and
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00287
Repository ID: MS q 31
Date: before 1860
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A manuscript proposing ideas for a poem in the form of a prophetic vision about the future of America. Possibly related to "As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days," which was first published as "Chants Democratic 21" in 1860–1861. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "An After Thought or Two," and "Poem ante-dating."



Whitman Archive Title: Poemet
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00307
Repository ID: MS q 33
Date: 1860 or before
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Lists of synonyms for "poem."



Whitman Archive Title: Poems identifying the different branches of the sciences
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00072
Repository ID: MS q 30
Date: about 1859
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: List of ideas for poems about astronomy, geology, chemistry, mathematics, and music. An image of the verso is unavailable.



Whitman Archive Title: Preface Two Rivulets
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00122
Repository ID: MS q 62
Date: about 1876
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 6 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
Content: Fragment, heavily revised, of the preface to Two Rivulets (1876). Several of the leaves are made of scraps pasted together, and on the reverse of the fourth leaf is a draft fragment of the opening lines of a poem first published in the Galaxy (September 1867) as "A Carol of Harvest, for 1867," which was ultimately titled "The Return of the Heroes," Leaves of Grass (1881–1882).



Whitman Archive Title: Produce great persons and the producers
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00166
Repository ID: MS 51
Date: 1856
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten, print
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
Content: Manuscript and clipping. On one side of the manuscript leaf (see the first image linked above) are several prose notes, including two versions of a paragraph that was later revised to become a line in "Poem of Many In One," published in Leaves of Grass (1856), and eventually titled "By Blue Ontario's Shore." The phrase "savage and luxuriant," which appears toward the bottom of this side, was used in Whitman's open letter to Emerson, published in an appendix to the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass. On the other side of the leaf is a partial draft of "Poem of The Singers, and of the Words of Poems," also first published in 1856. In the final edition of Leaves of Grass this and another poem, which had been included in every edition since 1855, were combined to form "Song of the Answerer." Whitman pasted at least two newspaper clippings on the manuscript, one on each side. However, markings on both sides of the leaf indicate that Whitman potentially pasted a third, unidentified, newspaper clipping on this manuscript. One of these, which had covered Whitman's paragraphs but has since been detached, is included in the file; another is still pasted to the manuscript.



Whitman Archive Title: Proem
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00020
Repository ID: MS 12mo 15
Date: about 1856
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: These notes on sights in Manhattan and the themes of personality, egotism, and the equality of women may have contributed to what ultimately became "Starting from Paumanok," Section 12. The poem first appeared in the 1860 edition as "Proto-Leaf."



Whitman Archive Title: Progenitors
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00207
Repository Title: Progenitors (Autograph MS)
Date: 1850s
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A manuscript about Whitman's ancestors on his mother's side. Based on the paper and the handwriting, which he compares to that of Whitman's early notebooks, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to the 1850s (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:13).



Whitman Archive Title: Proud music of the Storm
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00046
Repository ID: MS q 23
Date: Mid- to late 1860s
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Correction notes and potential extra lines for the poem "Proud Music of the Storm," first published in The Atlantic Monthly (February 1869) as "Proud Music of the Sea-Storm." Subsequently, the poem was titled "Proud Music of the Storm" in Passage to India (1871), Two Rivulets (1876), and in Leaves of Grass (1881-1882). On the reverse of the manuscript is the beginning of a letter on Attorney General's Office stationery.



Whitman Archive Title: Religious Canticles
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00282
Repository ID: MS q 31
Date: about 1860
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: On one side are notes regarding a projected group of religious poems and their significance to other Leaves of Grass poems. On the reverse is a partial draft of the 1860 poem "Calamus 9," which was dropped from subsequent editions of Leaves of Grass. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "Secrets.—Secreta."



Whitman Archive Title: Remember in Scientific
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00300
Repository ID: MS q 33
Date: 1860 or before
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Two reminders about general principles Whitman had decided upon for future poems. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "a volume."



Whitman Archive Title: Remember that the clock and
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00298
Repository ID: MS q 32
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A prose manuscript dealing mainly with conceptions of time and which may have contributed to the following line in the first poem of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass (eventually titled "Song of Myself"): "The clock indicates the moment . . . . but what does eternity indicate?" The last few lines of the manuscript contain ideas and phrases similar to another passage of the same poem. The manuscript's likening of "God" or "the soul" to an "Elder Brother" is reminescent of lines "And I know that the hand of God is the elderhand of my own, / And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own." These correspondences suggest a date of before or early in 1855.



Whitman Archive Title: Remembrances I plant American ground
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00029
Repository ID: MS q 27
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: The draft poetic lines in this manuscript includes some language similar to wording in the first and final poems in the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass, eventually titled "Song of Myself" and "Great are the Myths." On the reverse (duk.00884) is a list of rivers, lakes, and cities that likely contributed to "Poem of Salutation" in the 1856 edition of Leaves.



Whitman Archive Title: Rules for Composition
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00130
Repository ID: MS q 136
Date: Early 1850s
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: In this manuscript (likely from the early 1850s), Whitman describes his views on style and composition. His comments about the importance of a lack of "ornament" in literature are similar to lines from the preface to the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. Whitman reworked some of those ideas on ornament and they appeared in the poem "Says" in the 1860–1861 edition of Leaves. The poem was later retitled "Suggestions" and was retained in Leaves until 1872 but thereafter was excluded.



Whitman Archive Title: Russian serfs
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00685
Repository ID: Box II-5B 103
Date: 1855-1856
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Grouped with a collection of notes about Africa and Asia, this fragment notes that Russia "has 40 million of serfs, (or slaves)." With the paper suggesting a date of 1855 or 1856, this scrap may have been the impetus for Whitman's inclusion of "You Russian serf!" in his catalog of downtrodden peoples in "Poem of Salutation" in 1856; the poem would later be entitled "Salut Au Monde!" The reference to the "Russian serf" was dropped from the poem after the 1860 edition.



Whitman Archive Title: Scantlings
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00061
Repository ID: MS q 202
Date: about 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A manuscript containing ideas about a race of scantlings, a product of "the strong growth of America." Written on a scrap of the paper cover stock used for some late copies of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass; however, the connection of this manuscript to Whitman's published work is unknown.



Whitman Archive Title: Sculpture
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00148
Repository Title: Sculpture
Date: 1840s or 1850s
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: These notes about sculpture have some similarity to a line in the 1855 poem eventually titled "A Song for Occupations." Edward Grier notes that the "writing seems to be that of the early notebooks; thus the date might be in the 1850s" (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 6:2033).



Whitman Archive Title: Secrets.—Secreta
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00283
Repository ID: MS q 31
Date: 1860 or before
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Ideas for two poems, one listing "all the things done in secret," and the other involving a "vocabularium" of words and phrases. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "Religious Canticles."



Whitman Archive Title: September 11, 12, 13—1850
Whitman Archive ID: hyb.00016
Repository Title: Mother's family lived
Date: Between 1850 and 1883
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Content: This manuscript, consisting of two leaves, features an autobiographical account of Whitman's visit to his birthplace in Huntington, Long Island. Whitman mentions this visit in "The Old Whitman and Van Velsor Cemeteries," an 1881 recollection published in Specimen Days. Although Whitman probably wrote the manuscript during or shortly after the visit in September 1850, he returned to it as late as 1883, adding a note at the end of the piece about the death of his stepuncle (see Edward Grier, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:4). At some point, the leaves of the manuscript became separated, and the first leaf wound up at the University of Virginia and the second at Duke University. We have presented them here as one object.



Whitman Archive Title: Slavery
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00149
Repository Title: Slavery—the Slaveholders—The Constitution
Date: Between 1850 and 1860
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 20 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40
Content: References to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 indicate that parts of this manuscript were likely written in the early 1850s. Edward Grier writes that it "seems to be a composite manuscript assembled, in characteristic Whitman fashion, from fragments large and small, with several discontinuities" which were "combined into one essay or speech about 1856 and revised in minor detail . . . in 1858 or later" (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 6:2171–2172). Grier explains the discontinuities in more detail in his headnote to the transcription of this manuscript. In that headnote he also speculates about the significance of the mathematical calculations found on the versos of several of the leaves. Grier notes that Whitman's "emphasis, especially in the early pages, on the Constitution as a contract reflects his reading of at least parts of The Social Contract" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (6:2171). In theme, tone, and some of the wording, this manuscript bears a strong resemblance to "The Eighteenth Presidency!" an unpublished political essay that Whitman wrote in or around 1856. For more on that essay, see David Haven Blake, "'Eighteenth Presidency!, The' (1928)," in Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J. R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), 201–203. The leaves of this manuscript have been numbered, possibly by Whitman himself.



Whitman Archive Title: Song
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00257
Repository ID: MS q 30
Date: 1850–1892
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Manuscript scrap with ideas for a poem or poems about democracy, the future, women, young men, and the joy of life. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "The carpenter's and."



Whitman Archive Title: Specimen Days
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00679
Date: about 1880
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: A small scrap on which Whitman has written "Specimen Days" at the top in red ink. The manuscript contains a short note about Giulia Grisi and Giuseppe Mario, two opera singers who Whitman saw in New York in the 1850s, and who Whitman mentions in the section of Specimen Days entitled "Plays and Operas too." Edward Grier dates the manuscript, based on the paper and ink, to around 1880 (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984] 3:1064). The manuscript is pasted to a backing sheet, making the verso inaccessible.



Whitman Archive Title: Struggling steadily to the front
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00129
Repository ID: MS q 50
Date: about 1875
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Content: Heavily revised draft of the prefatory note for "Song of the Exposition," as it appeared in the 1876 volume Two Rivulets. Earlier and later publications of the poem did not include this prose introduction.



Whitman Archive Title: Such boundless and affluent souls
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00017
Repository ID: II-7C 201
Date: Between 1850 and 1856
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: The second paragraph of this manuscript contains phrases and ideas similar to lines from the poem "Miracles," in particular the phrase "Every hour of the day and night, and every acre of the earth and shore . . . ." The poem was first published in the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass, where it was titled "Poem of Perfect Miracles." The title was changed to "Miracles" in the 1867 edition of Leaves.



Whitman Archive Title: Sweet flag
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00883
Repository Title: Song of Myself (Autograph MS, draft portions) To be at all...
Repository ID: MS q 2
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. This manuscript, filled with suggestive words and phrases, appears to have contributed to the first and fourth poems in the volume, eventually titled "Song of Myself" and "The Sleepers," respectively. The phrase the phrase "polished melons" is reminiscent of the line "I reach to the leafy lips . . . . I reach to the polished breasts of melons" in "Song of Myself," and the list in this manuscript may relate to the following line: "Root of washed sweet-flag, timorous pond-snipe, nest of guarded duplicate eggs, it shall be you." Other elements of this manuscript appear to have contributed to "The Sleepers." The jotting "I am a look / mystic / in a trance/ exaltation" may have led to the line "I am a dance . . . . Play up there! the fit is whirling me fast." Further, the reference to the soothing hand is perhaps an early version of the passage in which the narrator, who stands "with drooping eyes by the worstsuffering and restless," passes his "hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from them." Finally, the passage about "Sap that flows from the end of the manly maple" (associated in the manuscript with the "tooth of delight" and "tooth prong") probably contributed to the following passage in the same poem: "The white teeth stay, and the boss-tooth advances in darkness, / And liquor is spilled on lips and bosoms by touching glasses, and the best liquor afterward." These lines were removed from the final versioen of the poem. The writing on the reverse side of the leaf (duk.00001) contributed to a different part of the poem that became "Song of Myself."



Whitman Archive Title: The American people ever
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00035
Repository ID: MS 13
Date: 1856
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Content: A manuscript about the California Vigilance Committee of the early and mid-1850s, these scraps contain lanuage similar to that found in Whitman's complete but unpublished essay "The Eighteenth Presidency!" The manuscript alludes to two of the candidates in the 1856 U.S. Presidential election, James Buchanan and Millard Fillmore, who Whitman refers to as "two old traitors," echoing a description of them as "two galvanized old men" in "The Eighteenth Presidency!".



Whitman Archive Title: The Body—
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00250
Repository ID: MS q 30
Date: 1850–1892
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: Manuscript containing ideas for a poem about the body as something more than physical. An image for the verso is unavailable.



Whitman Archive Title: The Great Laws do not treasure chips
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00264
Repository ID: MS q 9
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This manuscript includes language similar to lines that appeared in two of the poems in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, later titled "A Song for Occupations" and "Who Learns My Lesson Complete?" On the reverse (duk.00905) are cancelled lines, beginning "hands are cut," which later appeared, in a revised form, in "Faces," which was originally published as the sixth untitled poem of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass.



Whitman Archive Title: The Nibelungen
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00188
Repository ID:
Date: 1855-1865
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: The term "Nibelungen" appears in a poem first published in the New York Truth, March 19, 1891 entitled "Old Chants." The poem is one of the thiry-one poems included in "Second Annex--Good-Bye My Fancy," 1891–1892.



Whitman Archive Title: The Old World
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00142
Repository ID: MS f 37
Date: 1890
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A partial draft of Whitman's essay "Shakespeare for America," which was first published in the magazine Poet-Lore on September 15, 1890. The piece would later be reprinted in the Critic (titled "Shakspere for America") on September 27, 1890, and then included in Whitman's Good-Bye My Fancy in 1891 and Complete Prose Works in 1892. On the reverse is a letter from John W. Cook, dated 9 February 1890.



Whitman Archive Title: The States
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00814
Repository ID: MS q 195
Date: Between 1855 and 1860
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This manuscript contains a list of suggestions for titles poems or clusters of poems, including "The States," "Prairies," "Prairie Spaces," "Prairie Babes," and "American Chants." Since this manuscript was likely written in the late 1850s, it's possible that this last title is related to the "Chants Democratic and Native American" cluster in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. On the reverse (duk.00031) is an early draft of a portion of the poem that would eventually be titled "In Paths Untrodden".



Whitman Archive Title: The carpenter's and
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00256
Repository ID: MS q 30
Date: between 1850 and 1860
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: Manuscript containing ideas for a poem about architecture, carpentry, and masonry. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "Song. An image of the verso is not available."



Whitman Archive Title: The mob, the trial of Warren Hastings
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00141
Repository ID: MS q 36
Date: 1870-1888
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A manuscript with heavily-edited draft lines from Whitman's essay "Notes (such as they are) founded on Elias Hicks," which first appeared in November Boughs in 1888. The essay was also included in Complete Prose Works in 1892. Hicks (1748-1830) was a Quaker preacher and abolitionist who Whitman greatly admired.



Whitman Archive Title: The most Jubilant Triumphant Poem
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00265
Repository ID: MS q 29
Date: 1860 or before
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Manuscript with ideas for a poem meant to express different forms of "great jubilant glee." The connection between this manuscript and Whitman's published works is unknown. This fragment has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "Poem of a proud."



Whitman Archive Title: The most immense part of
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00003
Repository ID: MS q 1
Date: Between 1855 and 1860
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 5 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
Content: These manuscript leaves, one of which is held at the University of Texas, contain fragments of an unpublished prose piece that appears to represent an early draft of "Unnamed Lands," a poem published first in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. The material on the second leaf shares with that poem not only a close thematic similarity but also several of the same phrases. On the reverse of the manuscript leaves (see duk.00006, duk.00008, and tex.00002) are drafts of lines for the opening poem of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, ultimately titled "Song of Myself," sections six and seven. The poem was first titled, "Poem of Walt Whitman, an American," in the 1856 edition, and Whitman shortened the title to "Walt Whitman" in 1860–1861. The final title, "Song of Myself," was not introduced until the 1881–1882 edition of Leaves.



Whitman Archive Title: The most superb beauties
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00304
Repository ID: MS q 33
Date: Before or early in 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Notes, or possibly trial lines, expressing the idea that the highest beauty is found in what is "cheapest" and "commonest," probably connected to a line in the first poem of the 1855 Leaves of Grass, ultimately titled "Song of Myself". In the final version of the poem, the line appears in section 14. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "It seems to me," "What shall the great poet be then?" and "Make no quotations."



Whitman Archive Title: The name of this
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00127
Repository ID: MS q 63
Date: between 1884 and 1888
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 5 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
Content: Four leaves that constitute a draft, unpublished in Whitman's lifetime, apparently of a preface to a projected volume. Also included is a note, in an unknown hand, quoting Richard Maurice Bucke's note from the posthumous publication "Notes and Fragments" (1899). An image for the verso of this note is unavailable.



Whitman Archive Title: The true friends of the
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00938
Repository ID: MS q 10
Date: Between 1850 and 1854
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This manuscript is a partial draft of "Memorial in Behalf of a Freer Municipal Government, and Against Sunday Restrictions," a public letter printed in the Brooklyn Star on October 20, 1854. Whitman probably drafted the manuscript shortly before the piece was published. On the reverse (duk.00259) are draft lines that contributed to the final poem of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, later titled "Great Are the Myths."



Whitman Archive Title: Theme for piece
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00045
Repository ID: MS q 22
Date: about 1869
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: An outline for a poem on various types of music, potentially related to "Proud Music of the Storm" and/or "The Mystic Trumpeter." The poem "The Mystic Trumpeter" was first published in The Kansas Magazine of February 1872. "Proud Music of the Storm" was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in February 1869. The reverse contains cancelled notes about a stanza to describe a triumphal instrumental and vocal chorus corresponding to that of man triumphing over temptation and weakness.



Whitman Archive Title: Theory of a Cluster of Poems
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00279
Repository ID: MS q 31
Date: about 1860
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Note suggesting a cluster of poems about "the passion of Woman-Love," along with a few trial lines, all apparently related to the 1860 cluster "Enfans d'Adam" (retitled "Children of Adam" in 1876).



Whitman Archive Title: There is no word in
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00018
Repository ID: Trent II-7, 201
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: This manuscript features drafts of lines and ideas that appeared, in a revised form, in the first poem of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, ultimately titled "Song of Myself." The drafted lines relate to the portions of the poem that ultimately became sections 48 and 49. This manuscript has been mounted and framed with a prose fragment, dealing with the soul and nature, and a photograph of Whitman. An image of the verso is unavailable.



Whitman Archive Title: There is that
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00809
Date: 1860-1870
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
Images: currently unavailable
Content: A small scrap of prose that would make its way into a footnote for "Carlyle From American Points of View," which was first printed in Specimen Days (1882-1883). Although Edward Grier states that the handwriting on the scrap indicates a date in the 1860s, the essay was not published until its inclusion in Specimen Days.



Whitman Archive Title: This is the Earths word
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00019
Repository ID: MS q 193
Date: About 1856
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A note possibly related to the poem "A Song of the Rolling Earth," first published in the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass as "Poem of The Sayers of The Words of The Earth." A portrait of Whitman accompanies this manuscript in the Trent Collection, however, an image of this portrait is not included in this finding aid.



Whitman Archive Title: This singular young man
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00120
Repository Title: "This singular young man was unnoted for any strong qualities"
Date: 1840s or early 1850s
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Content: This manuscript was first printed, in two separate segments, in Richard Maurice Bucke's Notes and Fragments (London, Ontario: A. Talbot & Co., 1899, 114–115, 116–117. Bucke dates the manuscript to the 1840s. It is possibly a draft of an early piece of fiction, but no connection to Whitman's known published works has been established.



Whitman Archive Title: Though so loving
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00183
Repository ID: MS q 99
Date: 1870-1881
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Manuscript fragment comparing an unnamed poet (the repository finding aid suggests that it is Tennyson) to Walter Scott. It also contains a parenthetical description of Thomas Jefferson's assessment of Scott, a description which is echoed in Whitman's essay "The Poetry of the Future," which was first published in the North American Review in February 1881. The essay would later be revised, reprinted, and retitled "Poetry To-day in America—Shakspere—The Future" in Specimen Days (1882) and Complete Prose Works (1892).



Whitman Archive Title: Thought
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00062
Repository ID: MS q 28
Date: about 1856
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A manuscript left unpublished by Whitman containing draft ideas for a poem. Written on a sheet from the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass.



Whitman Archive Title: Thought
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00163
Repository ID: MS 68
Date: about 1860
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: What appear to be draft opening lines for a poem, not known to have been published in Whitman's lifetime.



Whitman Archive Title: To be at all
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00001
Repository ID: MS q 2
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This manuscript contains a draft of the following lines in the first poem of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, a poem that was later titled "Song of Myself": "To be in any form, what is that? / If nothing lay more developed the quahaug and its callous shell were enough. / Mine is no callous shell, / I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop, / They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me" (1855, p. 32). On the reverse side (duk.00883) are notes, trial lines, and lists of words and phrases related to what eventually became sections 24 and 49 of "Song of Myself" and to lines included in "The Sleepers." Both poems were first published in the 1855 first edition of Leaves of Grass.



Whitman Archive Title: To the English
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00254
Repository ID: MS q 30
Date: before 1860
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: Ideas for a poem about various nationalities and ethnicities, suggestive of "Salut au Monde!" which was first published as "Poem of Salutation" in 1856. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "—Poem of Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois," and no verso image is available.



Whitman Archive Title: Wants
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00150
Repository Title: Wants (Autograph MS, draft portions of an essay on labor advertisements)
Date: Between 1841 and 1862
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 7 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14
Content: This manuscript appears to be a draft of a piece of journalism, although it is not known if the piece was ever published. While Whitman wrote journalistic pieces throughout his life, the handwriting, ink, and paper are most consistent with manuscripts known to have been written before the first appearance of Leaves of Grass in 1855. Edward Grier details some of the reasons for beilieving the manuscript to date to between 1841 and 1862 in Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 1:88.



Whitman Archive Title: What shall the great poet be then?
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00303
Repository ID: MS q 33
Date: 1850s
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Note about "the great poet" that possibly contributed to a passage in the prose preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, in which Whitman writes that the "swarms of the polished deprecating and reflectors and the polite float off and leave no remembrance" (1855, p. xii). This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "It seems to me," "The most superb beauties," and "Make no quotations."



Whitman Archive Title: What we call literature is
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00295
Repository ID: MS q 32
Date: 1850s
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Prose manuscript expressing the belief that human existence possesses a grandeur that surpasses artistic accomplishments. It is unclear whether this manuscript is related to Whitman's published poetry or prose. Based on the appearance of a transcription of this manuscript with transcriptions of other early manuscripts in Richard Maurice Bucke's Notes and Fragments (1899), Edward Grier dates it to the 1850s (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 4:1558). The handwriting and the paper also would suggest an early date.



Whitman Archive Title: Whole Poem
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00252
Repository ID: MS q 30
Date: about 1855
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: Manuscript containing ideas for a poem about insects. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "Poem of Language." An image of the verso is unavailable.



Whitman Archive Title: You lusty and graceflu youth
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00032
Repository ID: MS q 11
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: An early version of a part of "Great Are the Myths," a poem first published, untitled, as the concluding poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, and again in the 1856 edition as "Poem of a Few Greatnesses." The poem went through many revisions through the different editions of Leaves of Grass, then was permanently dropped in 1881–1882, except the two couplets that became the poem "Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night." On the reverse (duk.00889) is partially cancelled verse beginning "Are the prostitutes nothing?" which includes a draft of a line from the third poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, ultimately called "To Think of Time."



Whitman Archive Title: [Fa]bles, traditions, and
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00261
Repository ID: MS q 6
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: The ideas and language in this manuscript relate to the first poem in 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, eventually titled "Song of Myself." This connection is reinforced by the supplied first line, added to a transcription of the manuscript that appears in Notes and Fragments, ed. Richard Maurice Bucke (London, Ontario: A. Talbot & Co., printers, 1899): "foot to fee lawyers for his brother and sit by him while he was tried for forgery" (47). This line, which matches a line in the 1855 version of "Song of Myself," is not currently written on the manuscript. In language, ideas, and structure, the last few lines of this manuscript also resemble lines 39–43 in the untitled fourteenth poem of the "Debris" cluster of the 1860–1861 edition of Leaves of Grass. The manuscript is also similar to other early manuscripts that relate to these poems and to the second poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves, eventually titled "A Song for Occupations" (see loc.00013 ["Priests"], uva.00251 ["Do I not prove myself"], and duk.00051 ["I know as well as"]). The reverse (duk.00800) contains unrelated prose writing, including a line similar to one found in "Song of Myself."



Whitman Archive Title: a volume
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00301
Repository ID: MS q 33
Date: before 1860
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Note suggesting a piece of writing to span "the whole range of recorded time," possibly related to "With Antecedents," which was first published in the New-York Saturday Press (1860) as "You and Me and To-day." The poem was revised as "Chants Democratic. 7" in Leaves of Grass (1860–1861) and took its final title, "With Antecedents," in the 1867 Leaves. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "Remember in Scientific."



Whitman Archive Title: distinctness every syllable the flounderer
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00119
Repository Title: distinctness every syllable the flounderer spoke
Date: 1840s or early 1850s
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Richard Maurice Bucke, one of Whitman's literary executors, first printed this manuscript in Notes and Fragments (London, Ontario: A. Talbot & Co., 1899). There, Bucke notes that this manuscript likely dates from the "40's or early '50's" (116). It is possibly a draft of an early piece of fiction, but no connection to Whitman's known published works has been established.



Whitman Archive Title: for Dem Vistas
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00126
Repository ID: MS 12mo 58
Date: 1867-1870
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 3 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
Content: Although this manuscript is titled as a potential introduction or preface to Democratic Vistas or Memoranda during the War it never appeared in that format in either work. However, the thoughts it contains were echoed in an article that appeared in the St. Louis Dispatch on October 17, 1879. The article contained an interview with Whitman, in which he voiced ideas similar to those in the manuscript. A portion of the Dispatch piece would later be reprinted as "An Interviewer's Item" in Specimen Days and Complete Prose Works.



Whitman Archive Title: for tramp & strike
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00779
Repository ID: II-7B 190
Date: 1879-1882
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: A manuscript scrap related to Whitman's undelivered lecture "The Tramp and Strike Question," which was written in 1879 but not published until it was included in Specimen Days in 1882. Although this scrap contains thoughts and ideas similar to those found in the essay, these lines do not appear to have made it into the final version of the piece. An image of the verso is unavailable.



Whitman Archive Title: hands are cut by the
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00905
Repository ID: MS q 9
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This manuscript contains draft lines that later appeared in a revised form in the sixth poem of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, eventually titled "Faces." On the reverse (duk.00264) are lines which, after revision, appeared in the eleventh poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, later titled "Who Learns My Lesson Complete?"



Whitman Archive Title: identical with the
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00878
Date: Before or early in 1855
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Prose notes that relate to "I Sing the Body Electric," first published as the fifth poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. The first line of the manuscript may relate to information Whitman used to write the article "One of the Lessons Bordering Broadway: The Egyptian Museum," published in Life Illustrated on December 8, 1855. This manuscript is pasted to a larger document along with another scrap that includes information used in that article. Both manuscript scraps were probably written shortly before or early in 1855, though the notes on the backing sheet to which they have been pasted may have been written at a later date. The reverse side of the leaf is part of a manuscript (duk.00066) discussing the conception of time.



Whitman Archive Title: is rougher than it was
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00786
Repository ID: MS f 129
Date: between 1848 and 1855
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A manuscript page containing notes from Whitman's return trip from New Orleans in 1848. This page of notes, numbered "2," describes the journey across Lake Erie; Whitman's visits to Buffalo, Albany, and Niagara Falls; and his arrival at Brooklyn. The notes would later be used as the basis for an article entitled "New Orleans in 1848" that appeared in the New Orleans Picayune on January 25, 1887. The article was reprinted in November Boughs. On the reverse are manuscript notes about Whitman's family history, likely written in the mid-1850s.



Whitman Archive Title: myself to celebrate
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00787
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A manuscript containing drafts of lines used in the first poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, eventually titled "Song of Myself," including the poem's famous opening line, "I celebrate myself." On the reverse is a prose manuscript (duk.00879) with an unknown connection to Whitman's published work. This manuscript has been bound, seemingly by a collector, with a printer's copy of the 1881–1882 edition of Leaves of Grass that contains numerous handwritten corrections by Whitman (duk.00098).



Whitman Archive Title: never to be forgotten in lectures
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00795
Repository ID: MS 12mo 61
Date: 1855-1860
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A scrap of poetry with lines that contributed both to the poem ultimately titled "Thoughts [Of these years I sing...]" and to "Apostroph," the opening section of "Chants Democratic and Native American." Both poems first appeared in the 1860–1861 edition of Leaves of Grass. The reverse (duk.00131) contains prose about America's need for "her own poems."



Whitman Archive Title: of Death—the song
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00292
Repository ID: MS q 31
Date: 1845–1892
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Idea for a poem about death, immortality, and "ensemble." It is unclear whether and how this manuscript is related to Whitman's published poetry. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "Poem L'Envoy," "Banjo Poem," and "Poem [?The Cruise]."



Whitman Archive Title: poem (subject)
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00047
Repository ID: MS 18
Date: about 1873
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 3 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Content: Notes for a poem about calls used in various occupations and, on the reverse of the second leaf, an early draft of a portion of "Song of the Redwood-Tree," a poem first published in the February 1874 issue of Harper's Magazine and reprinted in the "Centennial Songs" section of Two Rivulets (1876). Verso images are not available for the first and third leaves.



Whitman Archive Title: poet of Materialism
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00104
Repository ID: MS q 44
Date: 1855 or earlier
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: Manuscript expressing a belief in the continuing "amelioration" of the earth and humankind, written on a scrap of wallpaper. Although it is cast in prose, this may be an early draft of a group of lines, expressing similar thoughts, in "Great Are the Myths," which was first published as the final, untitled, poem of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. It also bears some resemblance to lines that appeared in the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself." Whitman continued to revise the poem in later editions of Leaves of Grass. In the 1881–1882 edition, Whitman removed "Great Are the Myths" from Leaves of Grass altogether, except for four lines, which he titled "Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night."



Whitman Archive Title: pref to Dem Vistas
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00791
Repository ID: MS 12mo 58
Date: 1867-1870
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Content: A manuscript at the top of which Whitman has written "pref to Dem Vistas." However, the manuscript's connection to any published work is unknown.



Whitman Archive Title: recommendation to the young
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00794
Repository ID: MS 12mo 15
Date: 1856
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: A prose fragment dealing with political independence that contains phrases and ideas similar to those found in Whitman's complete but unpublished essay "The Eighteenth Presidency!" The essay was subtitled "Voice of Walt Whitman to each Young Man in the Naton, North, South, East, and West," a line which is echoed in this manuscript. The reverse contains notes for poetry, including phrases which appear in section 6 of the final version of"Starting from Paumanok," first published as "Proto-Leaf" in the 1860–1861 Leaves of Grass, and in "Mediums," first published in the 1867 Leaves.



Whitman Archive Title: steamboats and vaccination
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00888
Repository Title: Preliminary Studies for Poems
Date: Before or early in 1855
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This manuscript includes words and ideas similar to those that appear in the prose preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass. Edward Grier notes that the "date is probably before or early in 1855" (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:177). On the reverse is another prose fragment (duk.00293) that appears to be related to lines from what would later become "Song of Myself."



Whitman Archive Title: the RR we go on
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00242
Repository ID: MS q 111
Date: 1879
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 8 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16
Content: Pages of notes from Whitman's western railroad journey in September 1879. The pages describe his travels through Missouri and Kansas, and large portions of the notes would find their way into Specimen Days (specifically, the sections entitled "Missouri State," "Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas," "Art Features," and "A Silent Little Follower—The Coreopsis").



Whitman Archive Title: the most definitely
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00945
Repository ID: MS 4 to 196 (Volume 196)
Date: 1855
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This prose fragment appears to be part of a draft of the essay, written by Whitman, titled "An English and an American Poet." Whitman published the essay anonymously in the American Phrenological Journal in October 1855, and he also printed and included it with other reviews in some copies of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. He printed the review yet again in a section of reviews called "Opinions. 1855–6" at the end of the 1856 edition. A prose note (duk.00154) is written on the back of the manuscript leaf.



Whitman Archive Title: to you an inheritance
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00890
Repository ID: MS q 29
Date: about 1860
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2
Content: This manuscript fragment contains about two and a half lines of poetry, heavily corrected, whose relationship to Whitman's published writing is unknown. On the reverse side (duk.00277) is a manuscript that contains a list of trial titles, probably for the poem first published as "Calamus 15" in Leaves of Grass (1860) and eventually titled "Trickle Drops." This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "And there, farther south," "The Scout," and "In a poem make the thought."



Whitman Archive Title: wooding at night
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00790
Repository ID: MS q 111
Date: between 1848 and 1887
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 2 leaves, handwritten
View images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Content: Manuscript that chronicles part of Whitman's return journey from New Orleans in 1848. The descriptions of the "[l]ong monotonous stretch of the Mississippi" and the "[p]ainful effect of the excessive flatness of the country" found their way, in an altered form, into "New Orleans in 1848," an article that appeared in the New Orleans Picayune on January 25, 1887. The article was later reprinted in November Boughs.



Whitman Archive Title: you cannot define too clearly
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00164
Repository ID: MS 68
Date: 1850s
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: Based on the handwriting, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to the 1850s (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 4:1593).



Whitman Archive Title: —Poem of Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00253
Repository ID: MS q 30
Date: 1860 or before
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View images: 1
Content: List of ideas for poems, mostly about various states. This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "To the English." An image of the verso is unavailable.




Access Restrictions: Collection is open for research. All or portions of this collection may be housed off-site in Duke University's Library Service Center. Consequently, there may be a 24-hour delay in obtaining these materials. Please contact Research Services staff before visiting the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library to use this collection.

Use Restrictions: The Copyright Interests in this collection have not been transferred to Duke University. For more information, consult the copyright section of the Regulations and Procedures of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Preferred Citation:  [Identification of item], Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.


Repository Contact Information:

David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Duke University
411 Chapel Drive
Box 90185
Durham, North Carolina 27708-0185


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