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"The mystical origins and spiritual force of Leaves of Grass—a work that both embodies and defines the American soul—will always remain a mystery. But there's also the puzzle of Whitman himself. Jerome Loving's scrupulously researched and judicious biography fits so many new pieces into that puzzle—about the man who became a poet, and the poet who became a legend."—J. D. McClatchy, poet and critic
"Hats off to Jerome Loving, who combines lucidity and learning in equal measure! Walt Whitman is a testament of fidelity to the embattled cause of accurate, untendentious historical scholarship. Here is Whitman just as he was, for better or worse, in his own time rather than our own. The book is riveting from start to finish."—Frederick Crews, University of California, Berkeley
"A grand, comprehensive, rich, and satisfying biography of America's greatest poet. Loving is one of the pre-eminent Whitman scholars of our time, and with this book he has created the capstone biography of Whitman. By that I mean that it builds on all its predecessors, synthesizes a mountain of Whitman scholarship and criticism, and then goes on beyond it all to create a vast, detailed, panoramic view of Whitman's life, the most complete, by far, of all the Whitman biographies."—Robert D. Richardson, author of Emerson: The Mind on Fire
About the author
Jerome Loving is the author of Lost in the Customhouse: Authorship in the American Renaissance (1993), Emily Dickinson: The Poet on the Second Story (1986), Emerson, Whitman, and the American Muse (1982), and Walt Whitman's Champion: William Douglas O'Connor (1978). He is the editor of Frank Norris's McTeague (1995), Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1990), and Civil War Letters of George Washington Whitman (1975).
Summary
A critical biography of Walt Whitman. It offers insights into many aspects of the poet's life, including his attitudes toward the emerging urban life of America, his relationships with his family members, his developing notions of male-male love, his attitudes toward the vexed issue of race, and his insistence on the union of American states.
