About this Item

Title: After the Supper and Talk

Creator: Walt Whitman

Date: Between 1884 and 1888

Whitman Archive ID: loc.00004

Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from The Walt Whitman Archive I: Whitman Manuscripts at the Library of Congress, ed. Joel Myerson (New York: Garland, 1993), 1:121; Major American Authors on CD-Rom: Walt Whitman (Westport, CT: Primary Source Media, 1997). The transcription was then checked against digital images of the original. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.

Editorial note: Whitman's poem "After the Supper and Talk" was submitted to Harper's in 1885 but was rejected. It was published in Lippincott's Magazine in November, 1887. This manuscript draft, however, may well have been intended for neither journal because of the reference to "volume" in the bracketed note. In November Boughs (1888) he used "After the Supper and Talk" as the concluding poem in the volume; it was followed by numerous prose pieces.

Related item: On the reverse of the manuscript leaf is pasted a partial, lightly corrected proof of the poem eventually titled "Song of the Exposition," made up of two scraps.