Whitman in His Own Time

by Myerson, Joel

• ISBN13: 9780877457282
• ISBN10: 087745728X
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Iowa Pr

Summary

Few American writers were as concerned with their public image as was Walt Whitman. He praised his own work in unsigned reviews; he included engravings or photographs of himself in numerous editions of his work; and he assisted in the writing of two biographies of himself. Whitman was also written about extensively by others throughout his lifetime. Whitman in His Own Timeis a collection of these contemporary accounts of the "good gray poet." The interviews with and recollections of Whitman collected by Joel Myerson represent a wide spectrum of accounts-visitors from America and abroad; newspaper interviewers; Whitman's doctor and nurse during his final illness; his literary executors; a student from his early schoolteaching days; and such well-known authors as Bronson Alcott, John Burroughs, and Henry David Thoreau. The selections also paint a well-rounded picture of Whitman, from his early days as a schoolteacher to the moment of his death, and demonstrate a varying range of attitudes toward the poet. Yet throughout the entire collection, Whitman himself holds center stage, and he is seen as vividly today as he was over one hundred years ago. Myerson's introduction to this expanded edition places these accounts of Whitman within the context of the time and discusses new scholarship on Whitman's life.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Expanded Edition	vii
Chronology	xiii
Walt Whitman. A Visit to the Good Gray Poet	3	(11)
Franklin Benjamin Sanborn
Interview with Whitman	14	(5)
Anonymous
Walt Whitman	19	(5)
Anonymous
From Walt Whitman	24	(23)
Richard Maurice Bucke
Walt Whitman at Home	47	(5)
George Johnston
A Visit to Walt Whitman	52	(5)
William Summers
Walt Whitman	57	(5)
C. Sadakichi Hartmann
Whitman's Reminiscences	62	(4)
Anonymous
The Lounger	66	(4)
Jeannette L. Gilder
Walt Whitman	70	(6)
William H. Garrison
Walt Whitman in Boston	76	(14)
Sylvester Baxter
The Last Sickness and the Death of Walt Whitman	90	(19)
Daniel Longaker
Walt Whitman, Schoolmaster: Notes of a Conversation with Charles A. Roe, 1894	109	(8)
Horace L. Traubel
From Reminiscences of Walt Whitman	117	(8)
William Sloane Kennedy
From The Legacy of an Octogenarian	125	(5)
James R. Newhall
A Visit to Walt Whitman in 1877	130	(12)
Edward Carpenter
Reminiscent of Whitman	142	(9)
Franklin Benjamin Sanborn
Chats with Walt Whitman	151	(16)
Grace Gilchrist
From Literary Friends and Acquaintance	167	(2)
William Dean Howells
Reminiscences of Walt Whitman	169	(23)
John Townsend Trowbridge
From Autobiography, Memories and Experiences	192	(2)
Moncure Daniel Conway
Personal Recollections of Walt Whitman	194	(19)
Ellen M. Calder
Walt Whitman: The Last Phase	213	(14)
Elizabeth Leavitt Keller
A Visit to Walt Whitman	227	(4)
William Hawley Smith
Estimates of Well-Known Men	231	(15)
Horace Traubel
A Personal Note on the Good Gray Poet	246	(3)
Richard Maurice Bucke
With Walt Whitman in Camden	249	(11)
Horace Traubel
Personal Memories of Walt Whitman	260	(14)
Alma Calder Johnston
Reminiscences of Walt Whitman	274	(9)
Helen E. Price
Personal Recollections of Walt Whitman	283	(26)
William Roscoe Thayer
From The Life and Letters of John Burroughs	309	(6)
John Burroughs
From Roadside Meetings of a Literary Nomad	315	(12)
Hamlin Garland
From Everyman Remembers	327	(6)
Ernest Rhys
From The Journals of Bronson Alcott	333	(7)
Amos Bronson Alcott
From The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau	340	(3)
Henry David Thoreau
Index	343