Transcripts from lost notebooks of Walt Whitman
Overview
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) wrote drafts and jottings in notebooks which (or leaves from which) were collected by various people. A large group (the Thomas B. Harned Collection) went to the Library of Congress (LC); ten of those notebooks (LC numbers 80, 84, 86-89, 94, 101, 111, 220) were lost in the 1940s. Photostats of a few pages had been made, a few texts printed, and several people had previously transcribed selections fromt he notebooks. The collection described here consists of photocopies of transcripts that Professor Emory Holloway of Brooklyn College and others had made, annotated and given to Professor Edward F. Grier, KU Department of English. The fragile original transcripts, mostly typed before 1920, do not circulate, and are shelved at MS Pryce P1. Grier, who often marked the transcripts, used them when editing his book, Notes and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts of Walt Whitman (NY: NYC Press, 1984), shelved at Special Collections D2538. Other Grier Whitman material is to be found int he University Archives at call number PP 302 in the Personal Papers of Edward F. Grier, a collection including notes, correspondence and proofs for his book.
Dates
- Creation: approximately 1900-1976
Creator
- Grier, Edward F., 1917-2004 (Person)
Conditions Governing Access
None
Conditions Governing Use
Spencer Library staff may determine use restrictions dependent on the physical condition of manuscript materials.
Extent
1 box
Language of Materials
English
Physical Location
MS 222
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Donated by Edward F. Grier, 1974-1976.
General
Along with the few photostats and printed extracts from Walt Whitman's lost notebooks, transcriptions made by various people are the primary evidence for the notebooks' contents. The transcriptions in MS 222 are extremely miscellaneous: in the first place, Whitman's jottings were contrained by neither time nor subject; secondly, a single sheet of transcript may contain paragraphs from several different notebooks. When a transcriber identifies a notebook, it may be by a private mnemonic, by a Harned number, or by the Lc number. Grier's books hould be used with the transcripts.
Subject
- Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892 (Person)
- Grier, Edward F., 1917-2004 (Person)
- Holloway, Emory, 1885-1977 (Person)
- Title
- Guide to the Guide to the Walt Whitman Collection.
- Subtitle
- Transcripts from lost notebooks of Walt Whitman
- Author
- Finding aid prepared by alh, 1976?; revised by ksc, 2007. Finding aid encoded by skt, 2007.
- Date
- 2007
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- Finding aid written in<language encodinganalog="language">English.</language>
- Finding aid permalink
- http://hdl.handle.net/10407/9624573436
- Preferred citation
-
Guide to the Walt Whitman Collection , Department of Special Collections, MS 222, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas Libraries
Repository Details
Part of the University of Kansas. Kenneth Spencer Research Library Repository