Whitman
Whitman names 4 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Whitman WALT, an American poet
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
WALT, an American poet, born at West Hills, Long Island, May 31, 1819. His education was obtained under difficulties and was not extensive. From twelve years of age he worked for his living, chiefly in printing shops, and soon began to try his hand at writing. He became one of the editors of the Brooklyn "Daily Eagle," and in 1848 he went to New Orleans, where he WALT WHITMAN worked on the "Crescent." He returned to Brooklyn in 1850, most of the way on foot, by the Great Lakes, thus he saw at first hand the great variety of the States and came into contact with all sorts of people, laying up material on which much of his future poetry was to be based. He was fascinated by people, masses of them as seen on a Brooklyn ferry or the New York streets, or lonely hunters and trappers, pioneers in the Western wilderness. In 1855 these meditations and observations bore fruit in the first edition of "Leaves of Grass," henceforth to be the chief interest of his life and the receptacle for all his most characteristic work. A second edition appeared in 1856, a third in 1860, and others in succession until 1891. In each new edition further material was added. In these poems Whitman departed widely from conventional American poetry both in subjects and in form. His theme may be defined as an attempt to realize the complexity of ordinary American life through his own personal experience, both real and in imagination. More than others of our poets he has expressed a conception of democracy, not as affording opportunity for the development of individuals, nor yet as crystallized in institutions, but as mass. The countless multitudes, living and yet to live, that make up the population of these States, he visualizes in many forms-the pioneers, marching resistlessly to their conquest of lands yet uninhabited; the crowds on the ferry or in the city streets; men and women of all occupations in every part of the country. It is the average man, he says, that he sings; his physical life, his religion, his capacity for friendship. In "the dear love of comrades" he found argument for the coming of a time when wars shall cease and a new golden age be ushered in. Life seemed good to him, all of it, and he spoke with a frankness that has given offense to many. Of himself he speaks much, meaning not merely himself as a type of the average man, but as a personification of all men. He also has a vivid sense of the eternal succession of the generations of the immortality of the race. While some of Whitman's poems have rhyme, metrical regularity, and stanzas of the usual types, these are not his most characteristic writings. He speaks of them as chants. They are divided into highly rhythmical units, without rhyme, varying in length of lines, held together by some pattern or cadence. In so great a mass of poetry there must be passages that are prosaic, mere catalogues. But there is also abundance nce of poetry of marvelous variety and beauty. Poems like "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed" or "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," though differing widely in form and structure from the older English tradition, are instantly felt to be creations of supreme beauty. But he uses little narrative; he is unable or unwilling to give the little pictures of simple life that we find in Whittier, in Riley, and other poets who have phrased the thoughts and lives of the multitude of ordinary men and women; he lacks the expression of simple religious faith and household virtues that we find in Longfellow; and he uses difficult, unusual, often bizarre diction, so that though he sets up the claim to be the poet of democracy he has never found wide audience among the people whom he wished to represent. Whitman's wide sympathy for all sorts and conditions of men was quickened by experience during the Civil War. He became a hospital nurse in Washington. In he has rehis prose "Specimen Days" he corded many of his experiences. Others found verse form in a collection named "Drum Taps." This whole experience was summed up in the series of poems that he wrote on the death of Lincoln, ons whom he tenderly loved. These portions and of his work reveal the kindness and human sympathy of the man, the beauty of humble service rendered to suffering boys on both sides of the great conflict, a deep pathos mingled with "Clear notes of faith and triumph." In "Democratic Vistas," a collection of prose pieces, he put his thoughts about America and her destiny, themes also found in "Leaves of Grass." His vivid sense of the two laws of individuality and comradeship, the keynote of his poetry, finds, when applied to his theory of the nation, a counterpart in his doctrine of the sacred individuality of the States, or separate units, as merged in the larger personality the cotton from the seed by hand. of the nation. This idea he develops mystically and with great earnestness; by which he it becomes the means by prophesies a higher evolution in which the nations of men shall be as the states in a larger union, a league of nationstates, uniting all the in world a common ood. "Great as they are," he brotherhood. says, "and greater far to be, the United States, too, are but a series of steps in the eternal process of creative thought." Whitman's rise to fame was slow. As was to be expected in the case of one who so openly flouted convention, he was alternately derided and made the basis of a cult. The poems were recognized sooner in Europe than in America. But gradually his fame has increased. His peculiarities of diction and form, his inequality, his constant repetition, his need of revision and compression, seem less important as the propheti: i elements of his work become more apparent. Since his death, at Camden, N. J., in 1892, his circle of readers has constantly increased.
Whitman MARCUS, an American pioneer
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
MARCUS, an American pioneer; born in Rushville, N. Y., Sept. 4, 1802. In 1836 he emigrated with a number of others to work as a missionary among the Indians of the Upper Columbia. Accompanied by his young wife he crossed the plains by wagon, being the first person to reach the Pacific by this means. He was soon followed by a large number of emigrants who settled in what was then known as Oregon, and which now forms the States of Or Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. At this time the Hudson's Bay company were using every possible means to secure this territory to the English. When this plan became evident to Dr. Whitman he decided to take every precaution to forestall it. The Ashburton-Webster treaty was then before Congress and was expected to settle the Oregon question. Knowing that the Government should have full information as to the true state of affairs, Whitman rode over 3,000 miles on horseback, enduring all the hardships of a Western winter in the mountains, and reaching Washington on March 3, 1843, only to find that the treaty had been signed. Fortunately the Oregon question had not been included. Dr. Whitman at once went to work and taught the Government the value of the land it had deemed worthless, demonstrated to the people the fertility of the soil of Oregon, and the fact that it could be reached by wagon, and then returned at the head of 1,000 emigrants. By his daring ride and his earnest endeavors Dr. Whitman won this great section for the United States, and the results of his work were secured by the treaty of 1846. In 1847, with his wife and some others, he was massacred by the Cayuse Indians.
Whitman SARAH HELEN POWER, an American poet
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
SARAH HELEN POWER, an American poet; born in Providence, R. I., in 1803. She married John W. Whitman, a Boston lawyer; was once engaged to Edgar Allan Poe, afterward writing a defense of him entitled "Edgar A. Poe and his Critics" (1860); and was noted for her conversational powers. She published several volumes of poems, among them being the volume "Hours of Life, and Other Poems" (1853); also "Fairy Ballads," written with her sister, Anna M. Power. She died in Providence, R. I., June 27, 1878.
Whitman CHARLES SEYMOUR, an American public official
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
CHARLES SEYMOUR, an American public official, born at Norwich, Conn., in 1868. He graduated from Amherst College in 1890. After admission to the bar, he practiced in New York City. From 1901 to 1903 he was assistant corporation counsel, and from 1904 to 1907 was a city magistrate. He was appointed judge of the Court of Special Sessions in 1907, and from 1910 to 1914 was district attorney of New York county. In 1914 he was elected governor of New York. He was reelected in 1916.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 granted Whitman "marvelous variety and beauty" but judged that "though he sets up the claim to be the poet of democracy he has never found wide audience among the people whom he wished to represent." That verdict has been reversed: Whitman is now taught as the central figure of American poetry, ancestor to Pound, Ginsberg, Neruda and Hughes, and the 1855 Leaves of Grass is among the most reproduced books in American literary history. The 1921 account also passes over in silence what modern readers put at the centre "the dear love of comrades" and the Calamus poems are now read as frankly homoerotic, and Whitman is a founding figure in gay literary history. New primary material has surfaced too: in 2016 and 2017 scholars identified two forgotten Whitman works in old newspapers, the 1852 novel Life and Adventures of Jack Engle and an 1858 health series, Manly Health and Training.
Written for this edition, 2026.