THE WORLD OF WALT WHITMAN AND LEAVES OF
GRASS
| 1819 | Walter Whitman is born on May 31 in West Hills, Long Is land, the second of nine children of Louisa Van Velsor and Walter Whitman, a carpenter. Herman Melville is also born this year. “Ode to a Nightingale,” by John Keats, appears. |
| 1823 | The senior Whitman moves his family to Brooklyn, anticipat ing that a building boom will create a demand for carpenters. |
| 1830 | Young Walt leaves school, works as an office boy, and con tinues his education through reading. |
| 1831 | Whitman takes an apprenticeship at the printing office of the Long Island Patriot. |
| 1832 | Whitman moves to the printing office of the Long Island Star, Brooklyn’s leading newspaper. |
| 1836 | He begins teaching school in East Norwich, Long Island, the first of many such positions he will take over the next several years. |
| 1838 | Whitman founds a weekly newspaper, the Long Islander. |
| 1840 | He campaigns for presidential candidate Martin Van Buren. |
| 1841 | The Democratic Review publishes some of Whitman’s prose and verse. |
| 1842 | The New World, a Manhattan newspaper, publishes Whit man’s sentimental temperance novel, Franklin Evans; or The Inebriate. |
| 1846 | After several years spent writing for several Manhattan and Brooklyn newspapers, Whitman begins a two-year stint as editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. He begins attending opera, a passion that will continue for decades. Whitman sits for the first of what will be more than 130 photographs over the course of his lifetime (he was the most pho tographed nineteenth-century writer after Mark Twain). |
| 1848 | Whitman becomes editor of the New Orleans Daily Crescent but soon returns north to found the Brooklyn Freeman. |
| 1850- 1855 | These are crucial yet mysterious years in the development of Whitman’s poetics. He works intermittently as a freelance journalist, builds and sells houses in Brooklyn, and lives with his family. The details of how he prepares for and writes his great work Leaves of Grass remain unknown. |
| 1855 | Whitman publishes Leaves of Grass on July 4 to little notice. His father dies seven days later. Whitman sends a copy of Leaves to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who replies with a con gratulatory letter. |
| 1856 | In September, Whitman publishes the second edition of Leaves of Grass, with added poems and Emerson’s letter. Henry David Thoreau visits Whitman at his home. |
| 1857 | Whitman returns to journalism as the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Times. |
| 1859 | Dismissed from the Times, Whitman prepares another edition of Leaves of Grass. He begins to frequent Pfaff‘s, a restaurant that is the epicenter of New York bohemian cul ture. There he meets Fred Vaughan, a stage driver; the rela tionship with Vaughan probably inspires some of Whitman’s homoerotic poetry. |
| 1861 | The American Civil War begins. |
| 1862 | Whitman travels to Fredericksburg, Virginia, to search for his brother George, who is reported missing in battle and turns up wounded. |
| 1863 | Whitman settles in Washington, D.C., where he works as a clerk for the Army Paymaster’s Office and makes lifelong friends of John Burroughs and William D. O’Connor, both writers. In his spare time, he visits wounded soldiers in the capital’s overflowing hospitals. |
| 1864 | Family matters, including the recent death of his brother Andrew and the mental deterioration of his brother Jesse, force Whitman to return to Brooklyn temporarily. |
| 1865 | The year the Civil War ends is a significant one for Whit man. Returning to Washington, he becomes a clerk in the Indian Bureau of the Department of the Interior but is dis missed within six months on grounds of alleged obscenity in Leaves of Grass. He meets Peter Doyle, an eighteen-year-old former Confederate soldier, and the men begin a long-term romantic relationship. Whitman publishes Drum-Taps, his book of Civil War poetry, and Sequel to Drum-Taps, which contains “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom‘d,” an elegy to Abraham Lincoln, slain in April of this year. |
| 1866 | William O’Connor publishes The Good Gray Poet, a pamphlet that defends the poet against his firing and charges of obscenity. |
| 1867 | Another edition of Leaves of Grass, including Drum-Taps and other Civil War poems, is published. John Burroughs publishes Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person, the first biography of the poet. |
| 1868 | The first foreign edition of Whitman’s poems is published in England, where Whitman attracts a sizable following. |
| 1871 | Democratic Vistas, Passage to India, and the Fifth Edition of Leaves of Grass are published. |
| 1873 | On January 23 a paralytic stroke leaves Whitman partially disabled, and his mother dies on May 23. Whitman moves to the home of his brother George in Camden, New Jersey. |
| 1876 | Whitman publishes Two Rivulets and a “Centennial” Edi tion of Leaves of Grass. He develops a close relationship with Harry Stafford, an eighteen-year-old errand boy. |
| 1879 | After traveling as far west as Denver, Whitman falls ill and stops in St. Louis to stay with his brother Jeff. |
| 1880 | Whitman returns to Camden, then travels to Ontario to spend the summer with Richard Maurice Bucke, a physi cian who becomes a lifelong friend and will be Whitman’s biographer. |
| 1882 | Facing criminal obscenity charges, Boston publisher James Osgood ceases distribution of a new edition of Leaves of Grass. The edition is published in Philadelphia, as is the autobiographical Specimen Days and Collect. Oscar Wilde pays two visits to Whitman and sends him an enlarged pho tographic portrait. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Ralph Waldo Emerson die. |
| 1883 | Richard Maurice Bucke publishes his biography, Walt Whitman. |
| 1884 | Whitman purchases a house at 328 Mickle Street in Cam den, New Jersey, where he receives his many friends. A daily visitor is Horace Traubel, Whitman’s so-called “Spirit Child,” who will recount his conversations with the poet in his multi-volume With Walt Whitman in Camden and who will be one of the executors of the poet’s estate. |
| 1887 | Whitman draws large crowds to a lecture in New York City and is the subject of a portrait by Thomas Eakins. |
| 1888 | In June, Whitman suffers another stroke. November Boughs, a collection of new poems and previously published prose pieces, appears. |
| 1889 | Whitman is enthralled by the glow of the electric street lamp installed on Mickle Street. |
| 1890 | Weary of English poet and essayist John Addington Symonds’s incessant inquiries about the homosexual content of the “Calamus” poems, Whitman fabricates the story that he is the father of six illegitimate children. |
| 1891 | Whitman publishes Good-Bye My Fancy, a collection of prose and verse, and prepares the final, “Death-bed” Edition of Leaves of Grass. Herman Melville dies. |
| 1892 | Whitman dies on March 26 and is buried in Camden’s Harleigh Cemetery. His last, spoken words are to his nurse, Warry Fritzinger: “Warry, shift.” |