Walt Whitman Biography
Walt was a poet who was active in the early to mid 1800s. He released one of his most famous works, Leaves of Grass, in 1855.
Walter (Called Walt, to distinguish him from his father) Whitman was born in Long Island, as the second child of Walter Whitman and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman. He later had a total of eight siblings, and due to some bad investments the family had to move around and live in a series of different homes. Walt himself says he had a generally restless and unhappy childhood.
At age 11, Walt finishes school and starts to work as office boy for two lawyers, as an attempt to bring some income for his family. He later moved on to work for a printer in Brooklyn a summer, before he got a job at the shop of the editor of the leading local weekly newspaper. This is where …show more content…
The same brother his mother was staying at due to illness. She died later the same year as Walt moved in.
After getting his own home in the same area, and his brother moving away, Walt spent his days almost completely bedridden until he died in 1892.
Walt Whitman is claimed to be America's first “poet of democracy”, and a british friend of him wrote
“you cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass… He has expressed that civilization, ‘up to date.’ as he would say, and no student of the philisophy of history can do without him”
Oscar Wilde among others viewed Walt as a prophet of a utopian future and of same-sex desire - the passion of comrades. He also inspired many anti-war poets, and was even the model for the character Dracula, from the book with the same name, by Bram Stoker.
His poems have been set to music more than almost any other American poet.
To me, personally, Walt’s works have probably had a bigger impact on me than I know. Both through other authors being inspired by him, and his thoughts on anti-war, and his poems about said
Walter (Called Walt, to distinguish him from his father) Whitman was born in Long Island, as the second child of Walter Whitman and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman. He later had a total of eight siblings, and due to some bad investments the family had to move around and live in a series of different homes. Walt himself says he had a generally restless and unhappy childhood.
At age 11, Walt finishes school and starts to work as office boy for two lawyers, as an attempt to bring some income for his family. He later moved on to work for a printer in Brooklyn a summer, before he got a job at the shop of the editor of the leading local weekly newspaper. This is where …show more content…
The same brother his mother was staying at due to illness. She died later the same year as Walt moved in.
After getting his own home in the same area, and his brother moving away, Walt spent his days almost completely bedridden until he died in 1892.
Walt Whitman is claimed to be America's first “poet of democracy”, and a british friend of him wrote
“you cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass… He has expressed that civilization, ‘up to date.’ as he would say, and no student of the philisophy of history can do without him”
Oscar Wilde among others viewed Walt as a prophet of a utopian future and of same-sex desire - the passion of comrades. He also inspired many anti-war poets, and was even the model for the character Dracula, from the book with the same name, by Bram Stoker.
His poems have been set to music more than almost any other American poet.
To me, personally, Walt’s works have probably had a bigger impact on me than I know. Both through other authors being inspired by him, and his thoughts on anti-war, and his poems about said