Synopses & Reviews
PREFACE. AS ONE of Walt Whitmans literary executors ln came to me uuder his will 1 Letters from himself to his mother written from Washington in war-time 1862-5 aud which have lately beeu published by Small, Mayuard Co. under the title of The Wound-Dresser. 2 Many hundred letters written by members of the Whitman family to one another, as lcttcrs from Mrs. Whitman to V. W.. Mrs. Heyde etc., letters from Georgc, Jcff, hiary. Hannah etc. to Mrs. Whitmatl, and SO on. All these letters had been preserved by Mrs. Wl itmau and upon her death in 1873 passed to Wnlt Whitman, who, a very sick man at the time and for long afterwards, simply let them lie in old boxes and bundles utitil at his death they passed to the present editor. 3 Quite a lumber of books from Whitma ls library, many of them annotated by the poet. 4 A great mass ol MS., the bulk of which is printed in this volume-a good deal of the rest is of an autobiographical character and is rescrvcd for a new edition of my Walt Whitman or to be used in publications supplelueutal to that volume. 5 The magazine articles and newspaper cuttings cnumcrated in Part VI. of this volume. Each of the other trvo literary executors took under the poets will the sameamount of material as myself, so it will bc seen that these MS. remains mere quite extensive, and judging by the careless, haphazard manner of their preservation it would seem certain B at more must have been lost than were left in existcncc at the titnc of the poets death. These facts and cotisiderations when we join to them others equally well knowrl ar d obvious, as that he kriew tlie Bible, Sliakespeare and Horner almost by heart bring out pretty clearly the extraordinary industry ofthis man, who has generally beer1 considered as easy-going, careless, idle, even a loafer, but who must have been, in fact, tliough almost irl secret, one of the most indefatigable workers who ever lived even in America. Por it must be remembered that irom childhood he not only had to make his own living by actual daily work tcnding office, typesettit g, scliool teaching, editing newspapers, carpentering, house-building but a11 his life, after early youth, he assisted in the lnainteuance of other membcm of thc family. And besides all this, consider the time taken up by his numerous friei dships-his frequent trips into the country, his sails on the bay with pilots, fishermen and others, the many hours spent on the ferry boats and omibusses, and later his work in the hospitals. But though it often seems almost or quite miraculous malt Whitman always had time and always had money for all his purposes. The notes printed ill this volume came to mc in scrapbooks and in bundIes. They are all on loose sheets and small pieces of paper of cndlcss sizes, shapes, shades and qualities, some eveu written on the back of scraps of wall-paper j. Sometimes they are pasted in a scrapbook but more often stuck in loose, or as said tied I I bu ndles. In both the scrapbooks and hi ndlesth e MS. notes are tnixed with the magazine articles and the newspaper cuttings. These notes, cuttings etc. extend from ihc fortics dowri to the seventies or eighties-they belong very largely to the fifties. Evcry word printed in the body of this book except in the sixth part, which contains the list of magazine articles and newspaper cuttings and excepting also headings and footnotes is before nie in the handwriting of WaltWhitman. When a passage has been quoted by hitu the quotation marks are preserved. Any words of explanation added by me are given in footnotes and in a smaller type so that my words can never be colifounded with Whitmans. . . v1...
Synopsis
Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.