The Walt Whitman Archive
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About this Item
Title: ["The new Juvenile Drawing Book"]
Creator: Walt Whitman [unsigned in original]
Date: September 29, 1847
Whitman Archive ID: per.00620
Source: Brooklyn Daily Eagle 29 September 1847: [2]. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm copy of the original issue. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
Editorial note: This piece is unsigned. However, Whitman was the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle when this editorial was written, and it was first attributed to Whitman by Cleveland Rodgers and John Black in Walt Whitman, The Gathering of the Forces: Editorials, Essays, Literary and Dramatic Reviews and Other Material Written by Walt Whitman as Editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1846 and 1847 (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1920). The piece was also included by Herbert Bergman in Walt Whitman, The Journalism. Volume I: 1834–1846 (New York: Peter Lang, 1998). The Whitman Archive editors agree that the style and content of the piece are consistent with other known Whitman writings of this period.
Contributors to digital file: Ruth L. Bohan, Hannah Fink, and Kevin McMullen
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"The new Juvenile Drawing Book"; by Henry Egbert, jr.,1 with numerous illustrations on stone, (from T. D. Smith’s bookstore, 202 Fulton street, Brooklyn,) appears to us an unusually fit work to place in the hands of youth learning to draw. We have noticed in several of the public schools of this city, that drawing is among the studies pursued; and we specially recommend to those schools the use of this little work.2
Notes:
1. Henry Egbert, Jr., (1826–1900), was an illustrator who compiled several drawing books while employed by Harper & Brothers. [back]
2. Many drawing books of the period were part of a larger democratic effort to cultivate the taste of the masses. For efforts to promote drawing in the schools see especially Peter C. Marzio, The Art Crusade: An Analysis of American Drawing Manuals, 1820–1860 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1976), 59–62. [back]