Walt Whitman, Sexuality, and Intimacy: 1819-1892

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Timeline, Sources, Narrative

OPEN ENTRY: This entry is open to collaborative creation by anyone with evidence, citations, and analysis to share, so no particular, named creator is responsible for the accuracy and cogency of its content. Please use this entry's Comment section at the bottom of the page to suggest improvements about which you are unsure. Thanks.

This is a stub, an entry with no, little, or incomplete text that users are encouraged to add to if they have data, documentation, citations, or constructive suggestions. Tip: first research what has already been written and create the bibliography (don't reinvent the wheel).



Jonathan Ned Katz hopes that users will help to collectively create this entry, making it the most comprehensive existing timeline and list of primary and secondary sources on Whitman, sexuality, and intimacy.


After that work is done we can collectively add a narrative history on the subject of Whitman, sexuality, and intimacy. If you collaborate on creating this entry, if you wish, please list your name in alphabetical order in the list of entry creators at the end of this section.


Subjects to Discuss in this Entry

Whitman and his brothers.

Whitman and his father.

Whitman and his mother.

Whitman and Mrs. Gilchrist.

Whitman and his sisters


Timeline on Walt Whitman, Sexuality and Intimacy

1840, December: A rumor circulating in the mid-twentieth-century asserted that, while a teacher in a Southold, Long Island school, Whitman was reputedly run out of town after a parent becomes irate over what he considered Whitman's undue familiarity with his son, one of Whitman's students.[1]


1855, July 6: Whitman puts on sale the first edition of "Leaves of Grass."[2]


1856, May -- May 1859: Sometime during this period, Walt Whitman is believed to have lived with or near his first known lover, Fred Vaughan. Whitman was living in his family home on Classon Avenue in Brooklyn, and Vaughan either lived with him or nearby with his own family.[3]


1856, September 11: Whitman registers for copyright his second edition of Leaves of Grass.[4]


1860, May: Whitman publishes third edition of Leaves of Grass, containing his 'Calamus' cluster of books exploring the theme of adhesiveness, or same-sex attraction.[5]


1862, September 18: Whitman learns the news of the battlefield death of Union soldier Bill Giggee, as relayed by his surviving comrade, Arthur Giggee. Whitman uses the circumstances of Bill's death & Arthur's response in the Drum Taps poem, "Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night."[6]


1865, January to March: Whitman meets his second known male intimate, Pete Doyle, a former Confederate soldier who is working as a streetcar conductor in Washington, DC.[7]


1871, September 3: Anne Burrows Gilchrist, widow of Alexander and co-author with him of a biography of William Blake, first writes to Whitman.[8]


1874, July 12: Edward Carpenter, who would gain prominence as a British Fabian Socialist and defender of the "intermediate sex," sends his first letter to Walt Whitman.[9]


1876, January to April: Whitman meets Harry Stafford, an 18-year old errand boy in the offices of the Camden "New Republic" newspaper and printing shop, where Whitman's 1876 centennial edition of "Leaves of Grass" was being printed.[10]


1876, February 14: Bram Stoker sends a letter to Whitman that he had written two years prior, on February 18, 1872.[11]


1876, September 13: Whitman meets Anne Gilchrist, who has moved from England to Philadelphia with her son Herbert, an aspiring artist, and daughters Beatrice, a medical student, and Grace. Mrs. Gilchrist remains in Philadelphia until April 1878, and returns to England the following year.[12]


1877, May 1: Edward Carpenter pays his first visit to Walt Whtman, and remains through the end of June. Carpenter later recalled that he and Whitman were sexually intimate during this visit.[13]


1882, January: Oscar Wilde visits Walt Whitman in Camden.[14]


1882, May: Oscar Wilde pays Whitman a second visit.[15]


1884, April: Bram Stoker in the company of British actor Henry Irving meets Walt Whitman in Camden.[16]


1884, June: Edward Carpenter makes his second visit to Walt Whitman in Camden.[17]


1887, December 22: Bram Stoker pays a second visit to Walt Whitman in Camden.[18]




Primary Sources on Whitman, Sexuality, and Intimacy

Whitman, Walt. [sex manifesto in Leaves of Grass 1856]


Secondary Sources on Whitman, Sexuality, and Intimacy

Katz, Jonathan Ned. Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).

Murray, Martin G., "'Pete the Great: A Biography of Peter Doyle," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (Summer 1994, 12:1), 1-51.

Murray, Martin G., "Responding Kisses: New Evidence about the Origins of 'Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night,'" Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (Spring 2008, 25:4), 192-197.

Murray, Martin G., "Walt Whitman, Edward Carpenter, Gavin Arthur, and The Circle of Sex," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (Spring 2005, 22:4), 194-198.

Shively, Charley editor, Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working Class Camerados (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1987).


Narrative History Focusing on Walt Whitman, Sexuality, and Intimacy

To be written after Timeline and Bibliographies are filled out a bit.


Creators of this Entry Listed Alphabetically by Last Name (optional)

Katz, Jonathan Ned

Murray, Martin G.


References

  1. ↑ Katherine Molinoff, Walt Whitman at Southold (Smithtown, n.p., 1966), privately printed; also David S. Reynolds Walt Whitman's America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), pp. 70-73.
  2. ↑ Ivan Marki, 'Leaves of Grass, 1855 Edition,' in J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, eds., "Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia", (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), pp. 354-359.
  3. ↑ Charley Shively, editor, Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working Class Camerados (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1987), pp. 36-50.
  4. ↑ Harold Aspiz,'Leaves of Grass, 1856 Edition,' in J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, eds., "Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia", (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), pp. 359-361.
  5. ↑ Gregory Eiselein, 'Leaves of Grass, 1860 edition,' in J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, eds., "Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia", (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), pp. 362-365.
  6. ↑ Martin G. Murray, "Responding Kisses: New Evidence about the Origins of 'Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night,'" Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (Spring 2008, 25:4), 192-197.
  7. ↑ Martin G. Murray, "'Pete the Great: A Biography of Peter Doyle," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (Summer 1994, 12:1), 13.
  8. ↑ 'Gilchrist, Anne Burrows (1828-1885)', in J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, eds., "Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia", (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), pp. 251-252.
  9. ↑ Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 3: 41n.
  10. ↑ Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 3: 37n.
  11. ↑ Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 3: 28.
  12. ↑ Jerome Loving, "Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself" (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 378. See also, 'Gilchrist, Anne Burrows (1828-1885)', in J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, eds., "Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia", (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), pp. 251-252.
  13. ↑ Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 3: 82n, 89n, 95n. See also Edward Carpenter, Days with Walt Whitman, With Some Notes on His Life and Work (London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1921 (reprint of 2nd editition, December 1906; first edtion published May 1906)), 3-4, 32. See also, Martin G. Murray, "Walt Whitman, Edward Carpenter, Gavin Arthur, and The Circle of Sex," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (Spring 2005, 22:4), 194-198.
  14. ↑ Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 3: 263.
  15. ↑ Richard Raleigh, Wilde, Oscar (1854-1900), in J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, eds., "Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia", (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), p. 790.
  16. ↑ Gay Wilson Allen, The Solitary Singer, p. 516.
  17. ↑ Walt Whitman, Daybooks, 1876-1891, p. 337.
  18. ↑ Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 4: 41n.


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