The Long Island Democrat

Established in May 1835 by James J. Brenton, the weekly Long Island Democrat was published in Jamaica, New York. Brenton had reprinted two of Whitman's early prose pieces and a poem, "Our Future Lot," Whitman's first known poem, from the Long-Islander. He hired Whitman as a typesetter in August 1839, and Whitman boarded in the Brenton home. But by the late fall, Whitman returned to work as a school teacher, a career that he pursued intermittently during the late 1830s. Nonetheless, Whitman continued to write occasionally for the Long Island Democrat through 1841, publishing several poems, as well as a series of short articles, "Sun-Down Papers from the Desk of a School-Master," which were also published in other newspapers. Brenton admired Whitman's ability as a writer and included him in a book, Voices from the Press: A Collection of Sketches, Essays, and Poems, by Practical Printers, which he published in 1850.

The Whitman Archive has not yet been able to arrange for digital scans of the Long Island Democrat, but we have completed transcriptions for the poems from photocopies of the microfilm of the original newspaper pages.

Poems

"Our Future Lot." Long Island Democrat 31 October 1838. (Reprinted from the Long-Islander from before 31 October.)           Transcription not currently available.

"Fame's Vanity." Long Island Democrat 23 October 1839: [1].

"My Departure." Long Island Democrat 27 November 1839: 2.

"Young Grimes." Long Island Democrat 1 January 1840: [1].

"The Inca's Daughter." Long Island Democrat 5 May 1840: [1].

"The Love That is Hereafter." Long Island Democrat 19 May 1840: [1].

"We All Shall Rest At Last." Long Island Democrat 14 July 1840: [1].

"The Spanish Lady." Long Island Democrat 4 August 1840: 2.

"The End of All." Long Island Democrat 22 September 1840: [1].

"The Columbian's Song." Long Island Democrat 27 October 1840: [1].

"The Winding-Up." Long Island Democrat 22 June 1841: [1].

Bibliography

Loving, Jerome. "A Newly Discovered Whitman Poem." Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 11 (Winter 1994): 117-122.

Loving, Jerome. Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Myerson, Joel. Walt Whitman: A Descriptive Bibliography. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993.

Reynolds, David. Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography. New York: Vintage, 1995.

Whitman, Walt. The Journalism. Eds. Herbert Bergman, Douglas A. Noverr, and Edward J. Recchia. Vol. 1: 1834-1846. The Collected Writings of Walt Whitman. New York: Peter Lang, 1998.