Selected Letters of Walt Whitman

by Edwin Haviland Miller (Editor)

"[Whitman's] letters are both revealing and evocative, a generous offering of a whole array of selves shaped by his circumstances and by his tactful sense of audience."—Kirkus Reviews

"In carefully choosing 250 from the thousands of letters Whitman wrote, Miller has fashioned a revealing and fascinating autobiography of America's great poet."—Choice

"This book will serve as an excellent introduction to Whitman … a marvelously well-equipped edition of letters."—Walt Whitman Quarterly

“The Whitman that this volume distills turns out to be a powerful letter-writer; this is a version of Whitman that we meet here for the first time, and he emerges as something of a revelation.”—Ed Folsom

There has never been an edition of the selected letters of Walt Whitman, a remarkable fact considering how accustomed we are to becoming acquainted with major writers through their letters. Now Edwin Haviland Miller, editor of the six-volume collected writings of Whitman, has used his intimate knowledge of the "good gray poet's" correspondence to produce this revealing selection of 250 letters, introduced and annotated concisely and evocatively. Whitman in these letters is simple, direct, colloquial, adding a counterpoint to his artistic voice and persona as a poet.

340 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1855

About the author

Edwin Haviland Miller was professor of English emeritus at New York University and editor of the six-volume Correspondence of Walt Whitman. Author of Salem Is My Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Iowa), he also wrote a biography of Herman Melville and books and articles about other nineteenth-century American authors.

Reviews

[Ewan Martin-Kane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read through the Civil War 'friend to the hospital boys' years and it's fascinating to lose and find sight of different versions of the man and the relationships of care he formed between men who were in need of love and far from home. Sometimes he seems uncomfortably powerful, sometimes pitifully vulnerable. The heart on this man, embracing, encroaching... In turns sinister and winsome. Bamboozling and a complicated man lingering and doing what he could to help in the convalescent in-between world of the Washington hospital tents.

[Maryjane Nordgren · Rating 5 out of 5]

raw power when i read this a year ago and even more so on the re-read this spring