Walt Whitman

Contained herein is a vast collection of Whitman's writing, including vignettes from his childhood, a series of powerful accounts of his work in hospitals during the Civil war, and a large amount of nature writing. Composed in 1881 primarily from sketches, notes, and essays written at various stages of the poet's life from the Civil War onwards, Specimen Days is the closest thing Whitman ever published to a traditional autobiography. A wonderful insight...

Anne Gilchrist was a British woman of letters. Upon reading Walt Whitman's poems for the first time, she immediately wrote to the author to let him know her delight in the poems and to thank him for publishing them. Eventually she began corresponding with Whitman, this collection of letters is a captivating look at an unusual friendship.

These reflections by one of America's greatest poets on the nation's most momentous struggle began when Walt Whitman discovered his brother's name in a newspaper list of Union Army casualties. The poet hurried from his Brooklyn home to a Virginia battlefront, where he found his brother, wounded but recovering. Profoundly moved by his experiences in the army hospital, Whitman settled in Washington, D.C., for the rest of the war. There he served as...

Walt Whitman's "The Wound-Dresser" is a sixty-five-line free-verse poem in four sections describing the suffering in the Civil War hospitals and the poet's suffering, faithfulness to duty, and developing compassion as he tended to soldiers' physical wounds and gave comfort. Published at war's end, the poem opens with an old veteran speaking, imaginatively suggesting some youths gathered about who have asked him to tell of his most powerful memories....

The Walt Whitman MEGAPACK™ collects more than 500 classic poems, essays, and letters of Walt Whitman, including "Leaves of Grass," Whitman's magnum opus.

In his unconventional verse, Walt Whitman spoke in a powerful, sensual, oratorical, and inspiring voice. His most famous work, Leaves of Grass, was a long-term project that the poet compared to the building of a cathedral or the slow growth of a tree. During his lifetime, from 1819 to 1892, it went through nine editions. Today it is regarded as a landmark of American literature. This volume contains 24 poems from Leaves of Grass, offering a generous...

A fully unexpurgated collection that restores the sexual vitality and subversive flair suppressed by Whitman himself in later editions of Leaves of Grass. A century after his death, Whitman is still celebrated as America's greatest poet. In this startling new edition of his work, Whitman biographer Gary Schmidgall presents over 200 poems in their original pristine form, in the chronological order in which they were written, with Whitman's original...

Whitman covers the Civil War, Darwin, democracy, Shakespeare, Lincoln, friendship, Brooklyn, government work, birds, rivers, technology, politics and politicians, poets, and a multitude of other topics in this indispensable volume drawn from Specimen Days, Notes Left Over, Pieces in Early Youth, November Boughs, and other works.

Compiled when the great poet was 70 years old, November Boughs offers verse and prose reminiscences of a singular American life. Walt Whitman's reflections begin with the essay "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads," in which he discusses the genesis of his most famous and controversial book, Leaves of Grass. A selection of poetry titled "Sands at Seventy" is followed by a series of essays and recollections that include "Slang in America," "What...

With the first publication of "Leaves of Grass" in 1855, Walt Whitman was solidified as an American poet of undeniable importance. The poems contained in that slim volume candidly spoke of politics, slavery, sexuality, consciousness, and the spiritual world. His content was as radical as his form; he utilized free verse unlike anyone before, creating a poetic tongue that was unique and personal yet universal and cosmic. Born in New York in 1819, Whitman...