Biography of Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman was born to a working class farming family in the early nineteenth century. When Walt was four, his father moved the family to Brooklyn, New York. During Whitman’s childhood New York City was still developing into a major urban center, and much of his work would reflect the growth and expansion of this metropolis. Whitman would take the ferry between Brooklyn and Manhattan as a child, an experience of crossing and gathering that would become major themes in his poetry.

As a child, Whitman attended Brooklyn’s public schools. He often visited his grandparents on their farm on Long Island, a pastoral setting that contrasted with the bustling urban environment of Brooklyn. From these experiences, Whitman developed a dual love of both the city and the countryside. At the age of eleven, Whitman finished his formal education and began working as an office boy but Whitman, a voracious reader, continued his own personal education independently. In 1831 he began working at a small newspaper where he was able to publish his first work, a group of essays on New York life.

Whitman then spent five of the unhappiest years of his life as a teacher in several country Long Island schools. Whitman was reviled by the backwardness and ignorance of many of his students and he refused to participate in the regular teaching methods of the day. He often used his own early poetry as a teaching tool. Though this time in his life was unhappy, it helped Whitman develop a theory of education and learning which he used as a subject for several of his poems.

Whitman returned to newspaper work until 1848 when he lost his job as editor of the Brooklyn Eagle after a political conflict with the newspaper’s owner. It was during this time that Whitman made the bold proclamation that he would be a poet. Whitman began writing Leaves of Grass around 1850 and by 1855 had completed a first edition which he printed himself. The book received several complimentary reviews from the literary world, though it would be several years before it would be widely distributed.

Whitman and his family went through many hardships during the Civil War. Whitman’s brother enlisted in the Union Army and was captured by Confederates. Whitman himself worked as a clerk in Washington, D.C. until he was fired, purportedly because the Secretary of the Interior found a copy of Leaves of Grass and objected to its sexual material. After losing his job, Whitman spent time preparing another edition of his book which was published in 1868.

In the later years of his life, Whitman lived in Camden, New Jersey. He continued to write and publish new versions of Leaves of Grass. He assembled the final edition of the book, what would be called the "deathbed" edition, in 1891 and which critics claim to be the most complete vision of Whitman's work. He died of complications from pneumonia in 1892 and was buried in Camden.