Brother Jonathan

During the early 1840s, Whitman worked as a freelancer for several magazines and newspapers, including Brother Jonathan, a new periodical, subtitled "A Weekly Compend of Belles Lettres and the Fine Arts, Standard Literature, and General Intelligence." The weekly was named for "Brother Jonathan," an early national symbol used to denote Americans eventually replaced by "Uncle Sam." Established in January 1842 by Park Benjamin and Rufus Griswold, Brother Jonathan published a variety of American fiction writers and quickly became known for its sensational stories. But the weekly's main appeal to readers were the popular serialized novels by British writers, such as Charles Dickens which, in the absence of an international copyright law, the editors pirated from British magazines. Brother Jonathan occasionally published poetry, and Whitman published two revised poems with new titles during its brief run. Brother Jonathan ceased publication in December 1843.

Poems

"Ambition." Brother Jonathan 1 (29 January 1842): [113]. An earlier version of this poem entitled "Fame's Vanity" appeared in the Long Island Democrat, 27 November 1839.

"Death of the Nature-Lover." Brother Jonathan 4 (11 March 1843): 290. An earlier version of this poem entitled "My Departure" appeared in the Long Island Democrat, 23 October 1839.

Bibliography

Blodgett, Harold W., and Sculley Bradley, eds. Leaves of Grass: Comprehensive Reader's Edition. New York: New York University Press, 1965.

Greenspan, Ezra. Walt Whitman and the American Reader. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

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

Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazines, 1741–1850. Vol. 1. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930.

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