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Whitman Archive Title: [after all]
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Whitman Archive ID: upa.00001
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Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in the Walt Whitman Collection, Annenberg Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania
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Box: 2
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Folder: 50
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Date: between about 1855 and 1860
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Genre: poetry
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Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
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Content:
This manuscript is written on a green sheet used for the
endpapers of the first edition of the
Leaves of
Grass
(1855), an edition that
begins with a ten-page statement in prose, originally untitled and later
known generally as the 1855
Preface
. This manuscript seems to represent
an early attempt by Whitman to recast the 1855 prose
Preface
into poetry. The 1860–61 edition of
Leaves of Grass
introduced two new poems created in this way: "Poem of Many in One" (later "By Blue Ontario's Shore") and "Poem of the Last Explanation of Prudence" (later "Song of Prudence"). Neither of the published poems incorporates lines from this manuscript, though it and "Song of Prudence" are drawn from adjacent portions of the 1855 Preface.
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