About this Item

Title: Chronological

Creator: Walt Whitman

Date: Between 1854 and 1860

Whitman Archive ID: duk.00066

Source: Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Transcribed from digital images of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the marginalia and annotations, see our statement of editorial policy.

Editorial note: 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," which probably dates from about 1854 to about 1860. Prose notes written on the back of the bottom paste-on 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.

The notes written on the pasted-on parts of this manuscript were derived from information Whitman used to write his article "One of the Lessons Bordering Broadway: The Egyptian Museum," published in Life Illustrated on December 8, 1855.

Related items: Both scraps of paper pasted onto this page have writing on the reverse. The scraps originally formed part of a larger notebook. It is possible that the notes about Hercules and Troy written on the front of the bottom paste-on, which would have been the only vertically oriented text in the notebook, were added after the page was removed from the notebook. However, we have made composite images that show the continuation of the text on the reverse of both paste-ons with the notebook leaves from which they were cut, and the manuscripts have been transcribed in separate files. See duk.00878, duk.00877, and loc.05589.