Early life Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in
West Hills, New York, the second of nine children of
Quaker parents Walter and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, of English and Dutch descent respectively. He was immediately nicknamed "Walt" to distinguish him from his father. At the age of four, Whitman moved with his family from Huntington to
Brooklyn, living in a series of homes, in part due to bad investments. Whitman looked back on his childhood as generally restless and unhappy, given his family's difficult financial struggles. One happy moment that he later recalled was when he was lifted in the air and kissed on the cheek by the
Marquis de Lafayette during a celebration of the setting of the
Brooklyn Apprentices' Library's cornerstone by Lafayette in Brooklyn on July 4, 1825. Whitman later worked as a librarian at that institution. At the age of 11, Whitman ended his formal schooling and sought employment to assist his family, which was struggling financially. He was an office boy for two lawyers and later was an
apprentice and
printer's devil for the weekly Long Island newspaper the
Patriot, edited by Samuel E. Clements. There, Whitman learned about the printing press and
typesetting. He may have written "sentimental bits" of filler material for occasional issues. Clements aroused controversy when he and two friends attempted to dig up the corpse of the
Quaker minister
Elias Hicks to create a plaster mold of his head. Clements left the
Patriot shortly afterward, possibly as a result of the controversy.
Career The following summer Whitman worked for another printer, Erastus Worthington, in
Brooklyn. His family moved back to
West Hills, New York, on
Long Island in the spring, but Whitman remained and took a job at the shop of Alden Spooner, editor of the leading
Whig weekly newspaper the
Long-Island Star. and anonymously published some of his earliest poetry in the
New-York Mirror. At the age of 16 in May 1835, Whitman left the
Star and Brooklyn. He moved to New York City to work as a
compositor though, in later years, Whitman could not remember where. He attempted to find further work but had difficulty, in part due to a severe fire in the printing and publishing district, In May 1836, he rejoined his family, now living in
Hempstead, Long Island. Whitman taught intermittently at various schools until the spring of 1838, though he was not satisfied as a teacher. After his teaching attempts, Whitman returned to
Huntington, New York, to found his own newspaper, the
Long-Islander. Whitman served as publisher, editor, pressman, and distributor and even provided home delivery. After ten months, he sold the publication to E. O. Crowell, whose first issue appeared on July 12, 1839. There are no known surviving copies of the
Long-Islander published under Whitman. By the summer of 1839, he found a job as a typesetter in
Jamaica, Queens, with the
Long Island Democrat, edited by James J. Brenton. One story, possibly
apocryphal, tells of Whitman's being chased away from a teaching job in
Southold, New York, in 1840. After a local preacher called him a "
Sodomite", Whitman was allegedly
tarred and feathered. Biographer
Justin Kaplan notes that the story is likely untrue, because Whitman regularly vacationed in the town thereafter. Biographer
Jerome Loving calls the incident a "myth". During this time, Whitman published a series of ten editorials, called "Sun-Down Papers—From the Desk of a Schoolmaster", in three newspapers between the winter of 1840 and July 1841. In these essays, he adopted a constructed persona, a technique he would employ throughout his career. Whitman moved to New York City in May, initially working a low-level job at the
New World, working under
Park Benjamin Sr. and
Rufus Wilmot Griswold. He continued working for short periods of time for various newspapers; in 1842 he was editor of the
Aurora and from 1846 to 1848 he was editor of the
Brooklyn Eagle. While working for the latter institution, many of his publications were in the area of music criticism, and it is during this time that he became a devoted lover of
Italian opera through reviewing performances of works by
Bellini,
Donizetti, and
Verdi. This new interest had an impact on his writing in free verse. He later said, "But for the opera, I could never have written
Leaves of Grass." Throughout the 1840s, Whitman contributed freelance fiction and poetry to various periodicals, including
Brother Jonathan magazine edited by
John Neal. Whitman lost his position at the
Brooklyn Eagle in 1848 after siding with the free-soil "
Barnburner" wing of the Democratic party against the newspaper's owner,
Isaac Van Anden, who belonged to the conservative, or "
Hunker", wing of the party. Whitman was a delegate to the 1848 founding convention of the
Free Soil Party, which was concerned about the threat slavery would pose to free white labor and northern businessmen moving into the newly colonized western territories. Abolitionist
William Lloyd Garrison derided the party philosophy as "white manism". Having previously published two novellas —
Franklin Evans (1842) and
The Half-Breed (1846) — in 1852, he serialized another,
Life and Adventures of Jack Engle, in six installments of New York's
The Sunday Dispatch. Apparently he drew the name Velsor from Van Velsor, his mother's family name. This self-help guide recommends beards, nude sunbathing, comfortable shoes, bathing daily in cold water, eating meat almost exclusively, plenty of fresh air, and getting up early each morning. Present-day writers have called
Manly Health and Training "quirky", "so over the top", "a pseudoscientific tract", and "wacky". He first experimented with a variety of popular literary genres that appealed to the cultural tastes of the period. As early as 1850, he began writing what would become
Leaves of Grass, a collection of poetry that he would continue editing and revising until his death. Whitman intended to write a distinctly American
epic and used
free verse with a
cadence based on the Bible. At the end of June 1855, Whitman surprised his brothers with the already-printed first edition of
Leaves of Grass. George "didn't think it worth reading". Whitman paid for the publication of the first edition of
Leaves of Grass himself A total of 795 copies were printed. No author is named; instead, facing the title page was an engraved portrait done by Samuel Hollyer, but 500 lines into the body of the text he calls himself "Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, disorderly, fleshly, and sensual, no sentimentalist, no stander above men or women or apart from them, no more modest than immodest". The inaugural volume of poetry was preceded by a prose preface of 827 lines. The succeeding untitled twelve poems totaled 2315 lines with 1336 lines belonging to the first untitled poem, later called "
Song of Myself". The book received its strongest praise from
Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote a flattering five-page letter to Whitman and spoke highly of the book to friends. Emerson called it "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed." The first edition of
Leaves of Grass was widely distributed and stirred up significant interest, in part due to Emerson's praise, but was occasionally criticized for the seemingly "obscene" nature of the poetry. Geologist
Peter Lesley wrote to Emerson, calling the book "trashy, profane & obscene" and the author "a pretentious ass". Whitman embossed a quote from Emerson's letter, "I greet you at the beginning of a great career", in gold leaf on the spine of the second edition. Of this action,
Laura Dassow Walls, professor emerita of English at the
University of Notre Dame, wrote: "In one stroke, Whitman had given birth to the modern cover
blurb, quite without Emerson's permission." On July 11, 1855, a few days after
Leaves of Grass was published, Whitman's father died at the age of 65. In the months following the first edition of
Leaves of Grass, critical responses began focusing on what some found offensive sexual themes. Though the second edition was already printed and bound, the publisher almost did not release it. In the end, the edition went to retail, with 20 additional poems, in August 1856.
Leaves of Grass was revised and re-released in 1860, again in 1867, and several more times throughout the remainder of Whitman's life. Several well-known writers admired the work enough to visit Whitman, including
Amos Bronson Alcott and
Henry David Thoreau. During the first publications of
Leaves of Grass, Whitman had financial difficulties and was forced to work as a journalist again, specifically with Brooklyn's
Daily Times starting in May 1857. As an editor, he oversaw the paper's contents, contributed book reviews, and wrote editorials. He left the job in 1859, though it is unclear whether he was fired or chose to leave. Whitman, who typically kept detailed notebooks and journals, left very little information about himself in the late 1850s.
Civil War years As the
American Civil War was beginning, Whitman published his poem "
Beat! Beat! Drums!" as a patriotic rally call for the
Union. Whitman's brother George had joined the
Union army in the
51st New York Infantry Regiment and began sending Whitman several vividly detailed letters of the battle front. On December 16, 1862, a listing of fallen and wounded soldiers in the
New-York Tribune included "First Lieutenant G. W. Whitmore", which Whitman worried was a reference to his brother George. He made his way south immediately to find him; his wallet was stolen on the way. "Walking all day and night, unable to ride, trying to get information, trying to get access to big people", Whitman later wrote, he eventually found George alive, with only a superficial wound on his cheek. He would write of this experience in "The Great Army of the Sick", published in a New York newspaper in 1863 and, 12 years later, in a book called
Memoranda During the War. He then contacted Emerson, this time to ask for help in obtaining a government post. The Whitman family had a difficult end to 1864. On September 30, 1864, Whitman's brother George was captured by
Confederate forces in
Virginia, and another brother, Andrew Jackson, died of
tuberculosis compounded by alcoholism on December 3. That month, Whitman committed his brother Jesse to the Kings County Lunatic Asylum. Whitman's spirits were raised, however, when he finally got a better-paying government post as a low-grade clerk in the
Bureau of Indian Affairs in the
Department of the Interior, thanks to his friend
William Douglas O'Connor. O'Connor, a poet, daguerreotypist, and an editor at
The Saturday Evening Post wrote to
William Tod Otto, Assistant
Secretary of the Interior, on Whitman's behalf. Whitman began the new appointment on January 24, 1865, with a yearly salary of $1,200. A month later, on February 24, 1865, George was released from capture and granted a
furlough because of his poor health. Effective June 30, 1865, however, Whitman was fired from his job. O'Connor protested until J. Hubley Ashton had Whitman transferred to the Attorney General's office on July 1. O'Connor, though, was still upset and vindicated Whitman by publishing a biased and exaggerated biographical study,
The Good Gray Poet, in January 1866. The fifty-cent pamphlet defended Whitman as a wholesome patriot, established the poet's nickname and increased his popularity. Also aiding in his popularity was the publication of "
O Captain! My Captain!", a conventional poem on the
death of Abraham Lincoln, the only poem to appear in anthologies during Whitman's lifetime. Part of Whitman's role at the Attorney General's office was interviewing
former Confederate soldiers for presidential pardons. "There are real characters among them", he later wrote, "and you know I have a fancy for anything out of the ordinary." In August 1866, he took a month off to prepare a new edition of
Leaves of Grass which would not be published until 1867 after difficulty in finding a publisher. He hoped it would be its last edition. In February 1868,
Poems of Walt Whitman was published in England thanks to the influence of
William Michael Rossetti, with minor changes that Whitman reluctantly approved. The edition became popular in England, especially with endorsements from the highly respected writer
Anne Gilchrist. Another edition of
Leaves of Grass was issued in 1871, the same year it was mistakenly reported that its author died in a railroad accident. As Whitman's international fame increased, he remained at the attorney general's office until January 1872. He spent much of 1872 caring for his mother, who was now nearly eighty and struggling with
arthritis. He also traveled and was invited to
Dartmouth College to give the commencement address on June 26, 1872.
Health decline and death , which is open to the public as the
Walt Whitman House. After suffering a paralytic stroke in early 1873, Whitman was induced to move from Washington to the home of his brother—George Washington Whitman, an engineer—at 431 Stevens Street in Camden, New Jersey. His mother, having fallen ill, was also there and died that same year in May. Both events were difficult for Whitman and left him depressed. He remained at his brother's home until buying his own in 1884. However, before purchasing his home, he spent the greatest period of his residence in Camden at his brother's home on Stevens Street. While in residence there he was very productive, publishing three versions of
Leaves of Grass among other works. He was also last fully physically active in this house, receiving both
Oscar Wilde and
Thomas Eakins. His other brother, Edward, an "invalid" since birth, lived in the house. When his brother and sister-in-law were forced to move for business reasons, he bought his own house at 328 Mickle Street (now
330 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard). First taken care of by tenants, he was completely bedridden for most of his time in Mickle Street. During this time, he began socializing with Mary Oakes Davis—the widow of a sea captain. She was a neighbor, boarding with a family in Bridge Avenue just a few blocks from Mickle Street. She moved in with Whitman on February 24, 1885, to serve as his housekeeper in exchange for free rent. She brought with her a cat, a dog, two turtledoves, a canary, and other assorted animals. During this time, Whitman produced further editions of
Leaves of Grass in 1876, 1881, and 1889. As the end of 1891 approached, he prepared a final edition of
Leaves of Grass, a version that has been nicknamed the "Deathbed Edition". He wrote, "L. of G.
at last complete—after 33 y'rs of hackling at it, all times & moods of my life, fair weather & foul, all parts of the land, and peace & war, young & old." Preparing for death, Whitman commissioned a
granite mausoleum shaped like a house for $4,000 and visited it often during construction. In the last week of his life, he was too weak to lift a knife or fork and wrote: "I suffer all the time: I have no relief, no escape: it is monotony—monotony—monotony—in pain." Walt Whitman died on March 26, 1892, at his home in Camden, New Jersey at the age of 72. An
autopsy revealed his lungs had diminished to one-eighth their normal breathing capacity, a result of bronchial pneumonia, A public viewing of his body was held at his Camden home; more than 1,000 people visited in three hours. Whitman's oak coffin was barely visible because of all the flowers and wreaths left for him. Later, the remains of Whitman's parents and two of his brothers and their families were moved to the mausoleum. His brain was donated to the
American Anthropometric Society in Philadelphia, but it was accidentally destroyed. ==Writing==