Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)
An 1881 edition of 'Leaves of Grass'
March 26th 1892: Walt Whitman dies
On this day in 1892, the American poet Walt Whitman died in Camden, New Jersey, aged 72. Born in New York state in 1819, Whitman came from a modest background of staunch Democrats. He first found work in teaching, before moving to journalism, though his political views proved too divisive for some newspapers. Whitman was especially anti-slavery, increasingly so after visiting Louisiana and witnessing the horrors of human bondage in person. The journalist gradually began to try his hand at creative writing, and in 1855 published a collection of twelve poems in Leaves of Grass. He revised the book and republished it in 1856 with twenty-one new poems; neither were particularly successful - partly because its sexual themes shocked some readers - though he did receive praise from fellow writers including Ralph Waldo Emerson. During the Civil War, Whitman routinely visited and cared for wounded Union soldiers. He retired to New Jersey in the 1870s, continuing to revise Leaves of Grass, until it included around three-hundred poems. Walt Whitman died in 1892, though his legacy lives on in his poetry, which has earned him the distinction of being considered one of America’s greatest writers.
“O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done”
- first line of Whitman’s ‘O Captain! My Captain’, 1865
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