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Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819 in West Hills, New York. His mother, Louisa Van Vendor, was descended from a long line of New York Dutch farmers; his father, Walt Whitman, was a Long Island farmer and carpenter. In 1823, the family moved to Brooklyn in search of work. One of nine children in an undistinguished family, Whitman received little in the way of formal education. At the age of 17, Whitman began teaching at various Long Island schools and continued to teach until he went to New York City to be a printer for the New World and a reporter for the Democratic Review in 1841. For much of the next years, he made his livelihood through journalism.
Besides reporting and freelance writing, he also edited several Brooklyn newspapers, including the Daily Eagle, the Freeman, and the Times... In 1848, Whitman met and was hired by a representative of the New Orleans Crescent. Although the job lasted only a few months, the journey by train, stagecoach, and steamboat helped to broaden his view of America. Whitman received little money with the first edition of Leaves of Grass, but he did receive some attention, including a letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson. The second edition in 1860 with the "Calamus" poems and the third edition of Leaves created controversy for readers, but the Civil War turned all eyes on the battlefields. Whitman traveled to Virginia to search for his brother, George, and found him -- wounded.
He stayed to help tend wounded soldiers in Washington DC; and wrote some of his famous war poetry, printed partially as Drum Taps and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd. " He witnessed Lincoln's second inauguration and mourned the president's assassination in April. In the years after the war, Whitman's reputation increased both in England and in the US. In January of 1873, he suffered a paralytic stroke. Several months later, in May, his mother died. Unable to work, he returned to live with his brother in Camden, New Jersey.
He was able to take trips to New York, Boston, and even to Colorado to see the Rocky Mountains, but his declining health mostly provided him with the opportunity to restructure and revise his most famous work, Leaves of Grass, the culmination of so many previously published collections. A sunstroke in 1885 and another paralytic stroke made him increasingly dependent on others. Walt Whitman died of complications from a stroke on March 26, 1892. Bibliography:
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Research essay sample on Leaves Of Grass Walt Whitman
