Poet at Work: Walt Whitman Notebooks 1850s -1860s

Walt Whitman holding a butterfly on his finger.[Detail] Walt Whitman. ca. 1877-1883.
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Overview

This collection offers access to the four Walt Whitman Notebooks and a cardboard butterfly that disappeared from the Library of Congress in 1942. They were returned on February 24, 1995.

The Thomas B. Harned collection of the Walt Whitman papers spans the period 1842 to 1937, with most of the items dated from 1855 to 1892. It was donated in 1918. The collection consists of correspondence, poetry and prose manuscripts, notes and notebooks, proofs and offprints, printed matter, and miscellaneous items, laminated and boxed in seven containers, and supplemented by one manuscript box of ancillary material. A detailed description of the Harned collection has been published in the Library of Congress publication Walt Whitman: A Catalog (1955), which contains an introductory essay on significant Whitman collectors and their collections and an annotated bibliographic listing of Whitman items located among the collections of various divisions within the Library of Congress.

Gallery

The Conservation of the Whitman Notebooks

Essay

Library Scans Whitman
Items - Preserves Them