The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

May

Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

—Walt Whitman

Source: Wikimedia

Walt Whitman was born in West Hills, New York, and raised in Brooklyn. There, he attended public school, but his love of literature blossomed as he began working in New York City printing offices in his teens.

As a young adult, he became a teacher. However, he left that behind in 1841 to become a full-time journalist. He founded a number of publications, most notably the Brooklyn Freeman, where he wrote openly about his abolitionist beliefs.

During the American Civil War, Whitman traveled to Washington, DC, to help his brother, who had been wounded in battle. He ended up staying there for 11 years, serving as a volunteer nurse and aiding many ailing soldiers.

He is best known, however, for his collection of poetry, Leaves of Grass, which he first self-published in 1855. The work would undergo numerous revisions over the next three-and-a-half decades. Six editions were published during his lifetime, and what began as a collection of 12 poems expanded, in its final iteration, to more than 300.

Leaves of Grass earned the attention and admiration of major transcendentalist figures, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Amos Bronson Alcott. Unfortunately, public opinion was not as favorable, and ...