Walt Whitman
31 May 1819 – 26 March 1892
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist, often called the father of free verse. His continually revised collection Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, transformed American poetry, and his volunteer service in Civil War hospitals deeply shaped his later work.
Lived at the same time
Well-documented people whose lives overlapped with Walt Whitman.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) Overlapped 73 years →
- Clara Schumann (1819–1896) Overlapped 73 years →
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Overlapped 73 years →
- Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) Overlapped 73 years →
- Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) Overlapped 73 years →
- Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Overlapped 73 years →
Life events
Walter Whitman was born in the hamlet of West Hills, Huntington, Long Island, the second of nine children of Walter Whitman Sr. and Louisa Van Velsor.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgThe Whitman family moved to Brooklyn in 1823, where Walt attended public school until about age eleven before going to work.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgWhitman was apprenticed to Brooklyn printers around 1831, learning the printing trade that would inform his self-published poetry.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgThrough the 1840s Whitman worked for numerous New York papers and edited the Brooklyn Daily Eagle from 1846 to 1848.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgWhitman printed the first edition of Leaves of Grass in Brooklyn in July 1855, a slim volume of twelve untitled poems that Ralph Waldo Emerson greeted enthusiastically.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAfter travelling to the front in December 1862 to find his wounded brother, Whitman settled in Washington, D.C., serving as a volunteer nurse in army hospitals.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgWhitman's Civil War collection Drum-Taps appeared in 1865, followed by a sequel containing 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd' and 'O Captain! My Captain!' mourning Abraham Lincoln.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgA stroke in January 1873 left Whitman partially paralyzed; he moved to Camden, New Jersey, where he lived for the rest of his life.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgWhitman died at his home on Mickle Street in Camden at age 72, shortly after completing the final 'deathbed edition' of Leaves of Grass.
Source: en.wikipedia.org