224 pages / 6.00 x 9.00 inches / 14 halftones, 13 line drawings, 1 map
Language Arts / Journalism | Literary Collections | Literary Criticism / American
Walt Whitman’s short stint in New Orleans during the spring of 1848 was a crucial moment of literary and personal development, with many celebrated poems from Leaves of Grass showing its influence. Walt Whitman’s New Orleans is the first book dedicated to republishing his writings about the Crescent City, including numerous previously unknown pieces.
Often spending his afternoons strolling through the vibrant city with his brother in tow, the young Whitman translated his impressions into short prose sketches that cataloged curious sights, captured typical characters one might meet on the levee, and joked about the strangeness of urban life. Including the first complete run of a fictional, multipart series titled “Sketches of the Sidewalks and Levee,” Walt Whitman’s New Orleans pairs his glimpses of the city with historical illustrations, supplementary texts, detailed annotations, and an introduction by editor Stefan Schöberlein that offers new insights on the poet’s southern sojourn.
Whitmanites, history enthusiasts, and lovers of New Orleans will find much to treasure in these humorous, evocative scenes of antebellum city life.
Stefan Schöberlein is assistant professor of English and director of digital humanities at Marshall University, as well as a contributing editor to the Walt Whitman Archive.
“Stefan Schöberlein’s revelatory book gives us newly found Whitman publications, work that deepens his association with New Orleans, the city he lived and worked in for only three months in 1848 but that arguably had a greater impact on him than any other place outside of Brooklyn and Manhattan. We have known about a fraction of these writings before, but now, with newly discovered sketches and with a wonderfully illuminating introduction by Schöberlein, Whitman’s work on the Crescent and his relationship with New Orleans shine brighter than ever.”
—Ed Folsom, codirector of the Walt Whitman Archive and editor-in-chief of the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review
“A racial reckoning, a failing romance, a literary awakening—New Orleans has long been pivotal in the myth making and speculation that have gone into accounts of Whitman’s career. In Walt Whitman’s New Orleans, Stefan Schöberlein presents a reader’s edition of the writings Whitman contributed to the city newspaper he helped found, the Daily Crescent. Through a range of methods, Schöberlein establishes the poet’s authorship of an expanded corpus of anonymous prose and thereby highlights an unfamiliar, light-hearted, and frequently humorous Whitman. The effect is eye-opening.”
—Kenneth M. Price, codirector of the Walt Whitman Archive and author of Whitman in Washington: Becoming the National Poet in the Federal City
“This expertly edited and attractively illustrated volume sheds new light on Walt Whitman’s brief but productive tenure at the Daily Crescent in the late 1840s. A special treat is its revelation of newly discovered newspaper pieces by Whitman.”
—David S. Reynolds, author of Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography
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