Whitman, Walt[er]
Whitman, Walt[er]( 1819–92),was born on Long Island, of English, Dutch, and Welsh stock. His family lived in Brooklyn (c. 1823–33), where Walt was educated, and he later served as printer's devil, journeyman compositor, and itinerant schoolteacher, besides editing the Long Islander (1838–39). Meanwhile he was reading the Bible, Shakespeare, Ossian, Scott, Homer, and something of the Greek and Hindu poets, the Nibelungenlied, and Dante, all of which, either in rhythm or thought, influenced his later writing. He entered politics as a Democrat, and after 1841 was actively associated with at least ten newspapers and magazines in New York and Brooklyn. Such poems as he published were conventional and mediocre, and to the Democratic Review (1841–45) he contributed many thin, sentimental, melancholy stories. These early writings were gathered in The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman (2 vols., 1921) and The...
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