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Creator
Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892
Call number
Berg Coll MSS 188323
Physical description
0.16 linear feet (2 volumes)
Language
English
Preferred Citation
Walt Whitman "A Carol of Harvest, for 1867" and "Timber Creek Nature Notes" manuscripts, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library
Repository
Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
Access to materials
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Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was a 19th-century American poet, essayist, and journalist. The Walt Whitman manuscripts, dating from 1867 to the 1870s, are composed of an autograph manuscript of the poem "A Carol of Harvest, for 1867;" and an autograph manuscript, "Timber Creek Nature Notes."

Biographical/historical information

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. He grew up and spent much of his career in Brooklyn, New York. Whitman's famous poetry collection, Leaves of Grass (1855, 1891-1892), was continuously expanded, revised, and republished during his lifetime. The collection celebrated the body, soul, nature, and democracy.

During the Civil War, Whitman worked as a government clerk in Washington, D. C., and nursed wounded soldiers. Those experiences influenced his poetry collection, Drum-Taps (1865). Whitman's widely recognized poems, "O Captain! My Captain!" (1865) and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" (1865), addressed the death of President Lincoln.

Whitman died in Camden, New Jersey in 1892.

Scope and arrangement

The Walt Whitman manuscripts date from 1867 to the 1870s.

The autograph manuscript poem "A Carol of Harvest, for 1867" (1867) numbers eighteen pages with a signature, corrections, and notes for the printer in Whitman's hand. Whitman revised and republished the poem several times, including for the 1881-1882 edition of Leaves of Grass with a different title, "The Return of the Heroes."

The autograph manuscript "Timber Creek Nature Notes" (1870s) is a single page of Whitman's notes on the weather, view of the sky, and trees. The manuscript includes an inscription, "One of Walt's Timber-Creek Nature notes, not used in Specimen Days" in the hand of Whitman's friend and biographer, William Sloane Kennedy. The manuscript is folded and tipped into a 1926 edition of Kennedy's The Fight of a Book for the World: A Companion Volume to Leaves of Grass.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Gift of Susan Jaffe Tane, 2023.

Processing information

Processed by Amy Lau in 2025.

Separated material

This item was donated by Susan Jaffe Tane in 2023 alongside a journal and a scrapbook about Walt Whitman (Berg Coll MSS 188324 and Berg Coll MSS 188325) and an Edgar Allan Poe manuscript fragment (Berg Coll MSS 188322), which have been described separately.

Using the collection

Location

Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788
Third Floor, Room 320