60 Fun Facts About Walt Whitman

Whitman is often called the father of which poetic form?

His work blended transcendentalism and realism and was condemned by some as obscene.

Where was Walt Whitman born in 1819?

He was the second of nine children of Quaker parents and moved to Brooklyn at four.

Why was he nicknamed 'Walt' from birth?

His mother was of Dutch descent and his father of English descent.

At what age did Whitman leave school to go to work?

He became an office boy and then a printer's devil for a Long Island weekly.

Which newspaper did Whitman found himself in Huntington after giving up teaching?

He later edited the Aurora in 1842 and the Brooklyn Eagle from 1846 to 1848.

Which newspaper did Whitman edit from 1846 to 1848?

He worked for many papers for short spells over the years.

What kind of book was Whitman's Franklin Evans; or The Inebriate (1842)?

Whitman was a vocal supporter of temperance in his youth and rarely drank.

On what date was the first edition of Leaves of Grass self-published?

It was printed in Brooklyn by two Scottish immigrants, James and Andrew Rome.

How many poems were in the first edition of Leaves of Grass?

The last edition held over 400; the first ran to only 95 pages.

How many copies of the first Leaves of Grass were printed?

Instead of the author's name, the cover carried an engraving of Whitman in work clothes and a jaunty hat.

The title of Whitman's great collection is a pun. What did publishers call works of minor value?

'Leaves' was another name for the pages they were printed on.

Which writer's five-page letter of praise did Whitman quote in gold on his second edition?

The line was 'I greet you at the beginning of a great career'.

Which 1844 Emerson essay, calling for a distinctly American bard, helped inspire Leaves of Grass?

Emerson wanted someone to write about the young country's virtues and vices.

What title was later given to the first, untitled poem of the 1855 edition, which ran to 1,336 lines?

The twelve poems together ran to 2,315 lines.

Complete Whitman's famous line: 'Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I...'

It comes in section 51 of the poem.

Which brother's name in a Fredericksburg casualty list sent Whitman rushing to the front in 1862?

George served in the 51st New York Infantry and was later captured by the Confederates.

What did Whitman do in Washington during the Civil War besides clerking?

His friend Charley Eldridge got him part-time work in the army paymaster's office.

Whitman's 1865 collection of Civil War poems was called what?

He published it on the day he was promoted to a slightly higher clerkship.

Which Interior Secretary dismissed Whitman from his clerkship in 1865?

His friend William O'Connor hit back with a pamphlet biography called The Good Gray Poet.

In which office of the Interior Department did Whitman work as a clerk before his dismissal?

He was then transferred to the Attorney General's office.

What nickname did William O'Connor's 1866 defence of Whitman give him?

O'Connor wrote it after Whitman's firing from the Interior Department.

'O Captain! My Captain!' is an extended metaphor about the death of whom?

It was written in the summer of 1865, months after the assassination.

How is 'O Captain! My Captain!' unusual among Whitman's poems?

Its AABBCDED scheme made it his most popular poem in his lifetime, though later critics called it conventional.

In which periodical was 'O Captain! My Captain!' first published on 4 November 1865?

It then appeared in Sequel to Drum-Taps.

What three symbols form the 'trinity' of Whitman's 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd'?

The bird is a hermit thrush and the drooping western star is Venus; the 206-line poem never names Lincoln.

Which bird sings in 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd'?

The poem follows the pastoral elegy's movement from grief toward acceptance of death.

Peter Doyle, often called the love of Whitman's life, had witnessed which event?

A former Confederate soldier, he worked as a Washington streetcar conductor when Whitman met him around 1866.

What was Peter Doyle's job when he and Whitman met around 1866?

Their joint photograph has been described as modelled on a marriage portrait.

What happened to Whitman in early 1873 that led him to move to Camden, New Jersey?

He moved into the home of his brother George, an engineer, at 431 Stevens Street.

Where in Camden did Whitman buy the only house he ever owned, in 1884?

He paid $1,750, partly with a loan from publisher George Childs.

Which visiting Irish writer later claimed 'I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips'?

They met in 1882; Whitman also influenced Stoker and was a model for Dracula.

Whitman is said to have been a model for which famous fictional character?

Bram Stoker admired him and corresponded with him.

In 1882 the Boston DA forced Whitman's publisher to drop Leaves of Grass by calling it what?

Rees Welsh & Company reissued it and the first printing sold out in a day.

Whitman's final version of Leaves of Grass, prepared at the end of 1891, is nicknamed what?

He had spent 33 years 'hackling at it'.

What did Whitman commission for $4,000 as he prepared for death?

He visited it often during construction; it stands in Harleigh Cemetery, Camden.

How old was Whitman when he died in March 1892?

His autopsy showed lungs shrunk to an eighth of normal capacity by pneumonia; his funeral was a public event.

Where in Camden is Whitman buried?

He was buried four days after his death.

Which English critic arranged the selection Poems of Walt Whitman in 1868?

Whitman reluctantly approved minor changes; the writer Anne Gilchrist championed the book in England.

What was mistakenly reported about Whitman in 1871?

A new edition of Leaves of Grass appeared the same year.

Which prose work of 1871 set out Whitman's ideas about American democracy?

Specimen Days followed in 1882.

In which 1989 film does Robin Williams' teacher urge his students to call him 'O Captain! My Captain!'?

The film is set at the fictional Welton Academy in 1959.

Which Whitman phrase does John Keating read out to his class in the 1989 Robin Williams film?

Keating tells the boys to sound their own over the roofs of the world.

The Walt Whitman Bridge, opened in 1957, spans which river between Philadelphia and Gloucester City?

Some locals objected to the name, seeing Whitman's work as sympathetic to communism.

Why did some citizens object to naming the Philadelphia-Camden bridge after Whitman?

They also criticised his egalitarian view of humanity.

What is Walt Whitman Shops on Long Island?

It opened in 1962 as the Walt Whitman Mall in South Huntington.

Which modernist poet said of Whitman, 'He is America'?

The Poetry Foundation calls him 'America's world poet'.

Which painter was among the last visitors Whitman received while still active at his Camden home?

Eakins painted a famous portrait of the poet.

Whitman's 1858 newspaper series on diet and exercise was published as what?

It sits in his bibliography between Leaves of Grass and Drum-Taps.

What was Whitman's yearly salary when he began his Interior Department clerkship in January 1865?

He soon got a promotion to a slightly higher clerkship.

Which cause of death did Whitman's autopsy reveal, alongside an abscess that had eroded a rib?

His lungs had shrunk to one-eighth of their normal capacity.

Which group of poems did Whitman decline to explain when Symonds asked if they were about love between men?

He also wrote openly about death, sexuality and prostitution.

Whitman later serialised a third novella, Life and Adventures of Jack Engle, in which year?

It ran in six instalments in New York's Sunday Dispatch and was only rediscovered in 2017.

Whitman was the second of how many children born to Walter and Louisa Whitman?

His Quaker parents were of English and Dutch descent respectively; the family struggled financially during his childhood.

On which weekly Long Island newspaper did the young Whitman serve as apprentice and printer's devil?

Its editor Samuel E. Clements caused a scandal by trying to dig up the Quaker minister Elias Hicks to cast a plaster mould of his head.

Without which art form did Whitman say he 'could never have written Leaves of Grass'?

He fell for Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi while reviewing performances as a music critic for the Brooklyn Eagle.

Whitman lost his Brooklyn Eagle job in 1848 for siding with which faction of the Democratic Party?

The paper's owner Isaac Van Anden was a conservative 'Hunker'; Whitman went on to the Free Soil Party's founding convention that year.

Which poem did Whitman publish as a patriotic rallying call for the Union as the Civil War began?

His brother George joined the 51st New York Infantry and sent vivid letters from the front.

What did Whitman's work at the Attorney General's office partly involve?

'There are real characters among them,' he wrote, 'and you know I have a fancy for anything out of the ordinary.'

In which South Jersey community did Whitman keep a summer home from 1876 to 1884?

He called Laurel Lake 'the prettiest lake in either America or Europe' and wrote about its spring and creek in Specimen Days.

Whitman's poetry has been set to music by more than how many composers?

They include Bernstein, Delius, Hindemith, Holst, Ives and Vaughan Williams; only Dickinson and Longfellow may have been set more often.