Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Jennifer McQuillan (Independent Scholar - North America)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.2: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth Century, 1783-1900.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1855

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poem

Resources

When Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass in early July 1855, he sent an unsolicited copy to Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose essay “The Poet” had provided an important part of Whitman’s inspiration for his poetry. Emerson privately hailed Whitman’s work with these now-famous lines (famous to present readers because Whitman included them without Emerson’s permission in the second edition of Leaves of Grass): “I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit & wisdom that America has yet contributed”, and preeminent critic Harold Bloom concurs, in his introduction to the 150^th Anniversary Edition of Leaves of Grass: “One century and a half later, it is still ‘the most …

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2270 words

Citation: McQuillan, Jennifer . "Song of Myself". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 August 2015 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35582, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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