The Walt Whitman Archive
Published Works
Periodicals
About this Item
Title: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Creator: Susan Belasco
Whitman Archive ID: per.00159
Source: Written for the Walt Whitman Archive. First published on the Archive in 2008. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the periodical poems, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang, Susan Belasco, and Kevin McMullen
From March 1846 until January 1848, Whitman served as the editor of the widely read Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a newspaper in Kings County, New York. Founded in 1841 by Isaac Van Anden and Henry Cruse Murphy, the Eagle was a political forum for the Democratic Party. During the two years Whitman served as editor of this influential newspaper which covered both national and international news, he wrote over 800 items for the newspaper, including editorials, political commentary, news stories, short reviews about literature, and two very early poems. As several scholars have observed, Whitman was beginning to experiment with lines of free verse during these years and his close scrutiny of American life and politics provided him with a variety of details that would later emerge in the poems of Leaves of Grass.
Bibliography
Greenspan, Ezra. Walt Whitman and the American Reader. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazines, 1865-1885. Vol. 3. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938.
Myerson, Joel. Walt Whitman: A Descriptive Bibliography. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993.
Renner, Dennis K.. "Brooklyn Daily Eagle." In Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, edited by J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass: Comprehensive Reader's Edition. Edited by Harold W. Blodgett and Sculley Bradley. New York: New York University Press, 1965.
Poems
"The Play-Ground." The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1 June 1846, [1]
"Ode: To be Sung on Fort Greene." The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 2 July 1846, [2]