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Poetry Manuscripts
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Guide to the Walt Whitman Poetry Manuscripts in the Walt Whitman Collection, Annenberg Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania
Original records created by Leslie J. Delauter; revised and expanded by The Walt Whitman Archive and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. Encoded Archival Description completed through the assistance of the Gladys Kreible Delmas Foundation, the University of Nebraska Research Council, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services.
Title: Walt Whitman Poetry Manuscripts in the Walt Whitman Collection, Annenberg Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania
Collection Number: Ms. Coll. 190
Creator:
Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892
Collector:
Sprague, Mrs. Frank Julian
Cridland, Mrs. Charles
Stevenson, John R.
Repository:
Annenberg Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania
Abstract:
This electronic finding aid was created from the original register created by the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania, and obtained by The Walt Whitman Archive. The original papers and the finding aid completed by Leslie J. Delauter are held at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania.
Scope and Content:
The bulk of the Walt Whitman Collection at the University of Pennsylvania Library was acquired from Mrs. Frank Julian Sprague of New York, a collector of Whitmania, with additional contributors including Mrs. Charles Cridland (the granddaughter of David McKay) and John R. Stevenson. The manuscript collection contains correspondence, manuscripts, and memorabilia that primarily represent Whitman's life and career after the Civil War and until his death, from 1867 to 1892. It also holds letters and papers of early supporters, biographers, and guardians of the Whitman legacy. These letters shed particular light on Whitman's relationship with William Michael Rossetti, the Gilchrist family, and Whitman's publishers in the 1880s. Roughly a third of the Whitman collection comprises correspondence, including Whitman's personal correspondence, dated between 1868 and 1891. Most of these items are were exchanged between Whitman and Anne Gilchrist, whom he called his "noblest woman friend." Their correspondence, begun immediately following the 1870 publication of her article, "A Woman's Estimate of Walt Whitman," continued until she died; this collection contains all of the known letters written to her by Whitman. The collection also includes correspondence with her children and Whitman's 1869 letter to Michael William Rossetti, through whom he sent a first, indirect message Gilchrist. Literary correspondents include John Burroughs, William Sloane Kennedy, Bernard O'Dowd, Richard Maurice Bucke, Thomas Biggs Harned, Horace Traubel, Henry Bryan Binns, Mary Mapes Dodge, William Dean Howells, William Douglass O'Connor, and John Addington Symonds. Also represented in this series are letters to close friends and family, including Whitman's mother, Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, and Susan and George Stafford.
The collection holds papers concerning Whitman's finances and dealings with publishers dating primarily from the 1880s, including letters concerning the 1881-82 edition of Leaves of Grass, which was published and then suppressed by James Osgood & Co. of Boston. The collection's holdings also include the correspondence and contract between Whitman and the Philadelphia publisher who picked up the censored edition, Rees Welsh & Co., notes and statements of account concerning works published by David McKay between 1882 and 1892, and documents concerning the proposed congressional bill to award Whitman a pension in recognition of his service during the Civil War.
The collection includes a small number of Whitman manuscripts, various proof sheets, and manuscript fragments. Writings about Whitman by his contemporaries include a draft of John Burrough's introduction to the 1912 edition of The Rolling Earth, proofsheet excerpts of Burrough's Notes on Walt Whitman, a notebook belonging to Herbert Gilchrist that records conversations with Whitman (1876), partial galley sheets (with notes) to William Sloane Kennedy's "A Study of Walt Whitman" (1881), and page proofs of Horace Traubel's "Walt Whitman's Birthday" (1891). There are a number of clippings, some gathered by Whitman himself, pertaining to the publication and suppression of the 1881-1882 edition of Leaves of Grass.
Whitman portraits include photographs and reprints and original sketches are included, as are engravings and printed descriptions of Whitman's birthplace, the Long Island schoolhouse in which he taught, and his house on Mickle Street. Odds and ends include a ticket to Robert Ingersoll's 1890 lecture, Whitman's visiting card, and a lock of hair supposedly cut from Whitman's head upon his death by his housekeeper, Mary Davis.
E. Sculley Bradley (1919-1967), a professor of English and American Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, was instrumental in the University's acquiring this collection. With Gay Wilson Allen of New York University, Bradley oversaw the editing of The Collected Works of Walt Whitman. The contents of the Whitman manuscript collection no doubt were utilized by Bradley in the editing of these texts.
Subjects: Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892;
Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892--Manuscripts;
Poets, American--19th century;
Series Description and Item Lists
Boxes: 2
Folder: 50
Whitman Archive ID: upa.00001
Title: "[after all]"
Date: about 1855
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View Images: 1 | 2
Written in ink on a green sheet used for the endpapers of the first edition of Leaves of Grass, approximately thirteen lines of verse. This manuscript seems to represent an early attempt to recast the 1855 Preface as poetry, drawn from a different part of the Preface than those Whitman eventually used for the poem eventually titled "By Blue Ontario's Shore," first published in 1860 as "Chants Democratic 1" .
Item: 2
Boxes: 2
Folder: 53
Whitman Archive ID: upa.00003
Title: "'Going Somewhere.'"
Date: about 1887
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View Images: 1 | 2
Manuscript of poem first published in Lippincott's Magazine, November 1887.
Item: 3
Boxes: 2
Folder: 56
Whitman Archive ID: upa.00002
Title: "Poem for the good old cause" and "Poem of the People"
Date: undated
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View Images: 1
Notes toward two possible poems, neither of which can be conclusively connected to any of Whitman's published poems. The first, however, bears some resemblance to "To a Certain Cantatrice," first published in 1860.
Item: 4
Boxes: 2
Folder: 57
Whitman Archive ID: upa.00005
Title: "[are you and me]" | "[Sanity and ensemble characterise the great master]"
Date: about 1856
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View Images: 1 | 2
On one side of the leaf are about 20 lines related to the 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass and to the poem first published as "Chants Democratic 1" in 1860. The lines were probably written as Whitman was mining the preface for material to be used in the poem, which was eventually titled "By Blue Ontario's Shore." On the reverse are 14 lines, also clearly related to the 1855 preface but only indirectly, if at all, to "Chants Democratic 1."
Item: 5
Boxes: 2
Folder: 58
Whitman Archive ID: upa.00006
Title: "[See there is Epicurus]"
Date: about 1857
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View Images: 1
Three lines of poetry on a trimmed sheet of paper. This appears to one of a group of manuscripts related to the poem, unpublished in Whitman's lifetime, with the manuscript title "Pictures." Whitman used lines from "Pictures" for the 1881 poem "My Picture-Gallery."
Restrictions on Original Materials: Please consult with Annenberg Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania.
Preferred Citation: To identify this finding aid as a source, see the Archive's "Conditions of Use" page.
Repository Contact Information:
Annenberg Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6206