Widely considered the most influential and innovative poet of America, Walt Whitman was born in West Hills, a village near Hempstead, Long Island, on 31 May 1819 to Walter and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman. His father had been born just after the end of...

"A great figure, the greatest assuredly in our literature—yet perhaps only a great childsumming up and transmitting into poetry all the passionate aspirations of an America that had passed through the romantic revolution, the poet of selfhood and...

"A great figure, the greatest assuredly in our literature--yet perhaps only a great child--summing up and transmitting into poetry all the passionate aspirations of an America that had passed through the romantic revolution, the poet of selfhood and...

Walt Whitman, poet and American original, is many things to many different people. To some he is quite simply the "country's national poet," as a contributor for the Economist declared on the hundredth anniversary of Whitman's death in 1992. To others...

Walt Whitman did not aspire to be a literary critic, yet in the course of his career he did review the works of a large number of writers ranging from the ancient classicists to his contemporaries. In form and length Whitman's criticism is...

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) is generally considered to be the most important American poet of the 19th century. He wrote in free verse, relying heavily on the rhythms of native American speech. In all, over a 37-year period, Walt Whitman published nine...