(1819 - 1992)

Whitman was born in  South Huntington, New York, Long Island, New York, in 1819, the second of nine children. In 1823, Whitman attended public school in Brooklyn, New York. Six years later he began working as a printer's apprentice and later in New York City as a printer.

In 1835, he returned to Long Island as a country school teacher. In 1838, Whitman founded and edited, the Long-Islander newspaper. In 1841, he returned to New York City and worked as a printer and journalist.

It was during this period that he began writing political speeches most notably with his involvement with the presidential campaign of Martin Van Buren.

The Tammany Society made him editor of a number of newspapers including the Brooklyn Eagle.

Between 1841 and 1859, Walt Whitman edited one newspaper in New Orleans (the Crescent), two in New York, and four newspapers in Long Island. It was during this period that Whitman began writing poetry

His work first began being published in 1841 and in 1842 the novel, Franklin Evans, was published in New York.

One short story, The Child's Champion, 1842, is considered to be the most important of these early works. as it established the foundation for his lifelong theme of the redemptive power of manly love.

The first edition of Leaves of Grass was self-publishedin 1855. Both public and critical response was muted. A year later, the second edition, including a letter of congratulations from Ralph Waldo Emerson, was published.

By 1860, Walt Whitman was working as  a clerk in the Department of the Interior but was fired when it became known that he was the author of Leaves of Grass.

Whitman died on March 26, 1892, and was buried in Camden's Harleigh Cemetery, in a simple tomb that he designed.