Walt Whitman and the American Reader

A far-ranging study of Whitman as a model of the nineteenth-century American writer.

Ezra Greenspan (Author)

9780521384698, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 October 1990

282 pages
23.7 x 16 x 2.5 cm, 0.53 kg

"Ezra Greenspan has brought together an abundance of information that he puts to good use in constructing a context for the emergence of Whitman from journeyman printer to journalist to poet....This is a fresh and comprehensive study." Paul Kane, Journal of American History

In Walt Whitman and the American Reader, Ezra Greenspan casts Whitman as the central actor on the stage of nineteenth-century American literary culture - a culture redefining its democratic identity. Against the context of the major changes revolutionising the professions of printer, publisher, bookseller and author, he examines the connection between the bookmaking culture of mid-century and Leaves of Grass, and between the conditions for authorship and Whitman's career. The result is a far-ranging study of Whitman as a model of the nineteenth-century American writer writing for - and sometimes reacting against - the newly enfranchised, expanded reading public of his time.

Preface
Part I. Whitman and the Conditions for Authorship in Nineteenth-century America: 1. Homage to the tenth muse
2. The evolution of American literary culture, 1820–50
3. Going forth into literary America
4. 'I am a writer, for the press and otherwise'
Part II. Whitman, Leaves of Grass and the Reader: 5. Intentions and ambitions
6. Whitman and the reader, 1855
7. The public response
8. Whitman and the reader, 1856
9. 'Publish yourself of your own personality'
10. 1860: 'year of meteors'
11. Whitman and his readers through the century
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: plays & playwrights [DSG]