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Walt Whitman is Born
Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, the second son of Walter Whitman, a housebuilder, and Louisa Van Velsor. The family, which consisted of nine children, lived in Brooklyn and Long Island in the 1820s and 1830s. At the age of twelve, Whitman began to learn the printer’s trade, and fell in love with the written word. Largely self-taught, he read voraciously, becoming acquainted with the works of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible. -
Walt Alone in the City
The Whitman family leaves Brooklyn and moves back to Long Island, leaving fourteen-year-old Walt to fend for himself in the city. Whitman gets a job as an apprentice for the Long Island Patriot newspaper. He immediately takes to the profession, and is soon freelancing on his own as a printer and typesetter for local publications. -
Whitman Takes Up Teaching
Whitman's newspaper trade comes to a halt after a fire destroys the printing district in New York. He rejoins his parents and siblings in Long Island and gets a job as a schoolteacher. In 1838 he goes back to the newspaper business. But after 10 months, Whitman quits his job at the newspaper and goes back to teaching, -
Whitman Publishes His First Novel
Whitman publishes his first novel, Franklin Evans; or The Inebriate. The pro-temperance novel is commercially popular, even though Whitman himself later comes to describe it as "rot." It is the rag-to-riches story of Franklin Evans. Franklin Evans starts as an innocent young man, leaving Long Island to come to New York City for the opportunity to better himself. Being young and naïve, he is easily influenced by someone whom he befriended (Colby) and eventually becomes a drunkard. -
Whitman Works at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Whitman started as the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper in 1846. His articles there include reviews of early novels by a young writer named Herman Melville and the poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Whitman is forced out of his job at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle after a political dispute with his boss over Whitman's opposition to slavery in 1848. He and his brother travel to New Orleans for a few months to work at The Crescent newspaper. -
Whitman Publishes Leaves of Grass
Whitman publishes the first edition of Leaves of Grass, a collection of twelve poems written in a bold new style. Readers are shocked and awed by the poems' raw subject material and striking style. Ralph Waldo Emerson sends Whitman a letter praising the book and congratulating him on "the beginning of a great career." -
Walt Whitman Publishes the Final Edition of Leaves of Grass
Whitman prepares the final edition of Leaves of Grass, known as the "Deathbed Edition." Though the first edition was published in 1855, Whitman spent most of his professional life writing and re-writing Leaves of Grass, revising it multiple times until his death. This resulted in vastly different editions over four decades—the first a small book of twelve poems and the last a compilation of over 400. -
Whitman Dies
On March 26, 1892, Walt Whitman passed away in Camden. Right up until the end, he'd continued to work with Leaves of Grass, which during his lifetime had gone through many editions and expanded to some 300 poems. Whitman's final book, Good-Bye, My Fancy, was published the year before his death. He was buried in a large mausoleum he had built in Camden's Harleigh Cemetery.
