1948/01/01 by Rollo G. Silver · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Poetry Analysis and Criticism
paper · doi:10.2307/2921485
crossref issued 1948/01/01 · crossref published 1948/01/01 · crossref published-print 1948/01/01 · openalex publication_date 1948/01/01 · crossref created 2006/04/24 · crossref deposited 2018/04/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06 · crossref indexed 2026/07/24
N O PERIOD of Whitman's life is as fascinating and elusive to the critic and the student as the five years immediately preceding the first edition of Leaves of Grass. So little is known about Whitman's activities during these formative years that it has been impossible to prepare adequate biographical studies of the poet's development. As a contribution to our knowledge of Whitman in I850, this paper presents three letters to the National Era signed Paumanok and, in order to establish authorship, correlates these texts with others written by Whitman. Between I850 and I855 Whitman sometimes housebuilder, sometimes journalist. The extent of his newspaper work remains indistinct, awaiting patient search through contemporary files, but what has been discovered shows the poet to be shrewd and original, so that further search should be rewarding. As a critic he revered naturalness in singing and painting, and simplicity in architecture, decrying the overornamented arts of Victorian America. In politics he a liberal, and the fact that in I850 Whitman contributed to Gamaliel Bailey's abolitionist National Era, the paper which first printed Uncle Tom's Cabin, clarifies his statement that he was then quite an 'abolitionist.' Although the appearances of two of the three contributions have been previously recorded,2 the final one has been hitherto unnoted. None, as far as can be ascertained, has been considered in detail. All are presented without change in text.