| Birth: | May 31, 1819 | | Death: | Mar. 26, 1892 | 
Essayist and Poet. Considered one of America's foremost men of letters, Whitman was born on Long Island, NY. His mother was barely literate, and his father was a friend of Thomas Paine. Whitman was taken out of school at the age of 11 to help support the large family. He learned the printer's trade, which began a life-long love affair with reading and the written word. He was mostly self-taught, but knew the Bible thoroughly, and was fond of Shakespeare, Homer and Dante. He became a teacher in 1836 at the age of 17, and continued to teach until 1841, when he turned to journalism as a full-time career. While briefly serving as editor of the "New Orleans Crescent" in 1848, he witnessed the cruelty of slavery at the New Orleans slave markets. He became an abolitionist, and upon returning to New York founded the free-soil newspaper the "Brooklyn Freeman". He wrote "Leaves of Grass" in July of 1855 and so astonished Ralph Waldo Emerson that he wrote to Whitman to say "I had to rub my eyes to see if the sunbeam was no illusion." Two of Whitman's more famous poems are "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed" and "O Captain! My Captain!". He wrote his last essay one year before his death. (bio by: VampireRed)
Search Amazon for Walt Whitman | | | Burial:
Harleigh Cemetery
Camden
Camden County
New Jersey, USA |
Maintained by: Find A Grave
Record added: Jan 01, 2001
Find A Grave Memorial# 1098 |
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