(1819 – 1892)

31 May,1819 Walter Whitman born at West Hills, Huntington Township, New York

1830–1831 Walt Whitman quits school; works as an office boy for lawyer, doctor.

1831–1836 Walt Whitman learns printing trade as apprentice for Long Island Patriot.

1841 Walt Whitman May, moves to New York City; works as a compositor for The New World. July, addresses Democratic Party rally in City Hall Park. August, publishes "Death in the School-Room (a Fact)" in Democratic Review.

1849–1854 Operates job-printing office, bookstore, and house building business; does freelance journalism. 31 March 1851, addresses Brooklyn Art Union; writes "Pictures" in 1853.

1855–1856 November 1855 to August 1856 writes for Life Illustrated; writes a political tract, "The Eighteenth Presidency!" Between August and September 1856, phrenologists Fowler and Wells publish second edition of Leaves of Grass, containing thirty-two poems.

1868 Poems of Walt Whitman, selected and edited by Rossetti, published in London (John Camden Hotten, publisher). "Personalism," second part of Democratic Vistas, published in the May Galaxy.

1870 Suffers depression; prints fifth edition of Leaves of Grass, and Democratic Vistas and Passage to India, all in Washington D.C., and dated May, Anne Gilchrist publishes "An Englishwoman's Estimate of Walt Whitman" in The Radical, Boston.

January, suffers paralytic stroke. Mother dies on 23 May. "Song of the Universal" read at Tufts College commencement by proxy. June, Whitman leaves Washington and moves in with his brother George in Camden, New Jersey.

1888 June, suffers another paralytic stroke followed by severe illness. Makes a new will naming Richard Maurice Bucke, Thomas B. Harned, and Horace Traubel as literary executors. Publishes November Boughs (Philadelphia: David McKay).

1890 April, delivers Lincoln lecture for the last time, Philadelphia. 19 August, writes to John Addington Symonds; declares Symond's homosexual interpretation of "Calamus" poems "damnable" and claims to have fathered six illegitimate children. October, Whitman contracts to have $4,000 tomb built for himself in Harleigh Cemetery, Camden, New Jersey.

1891 Publishes Good-bye My Fancy and Deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass (both published by McKay, dated 1892). Prepares Complete Prose Works (McKay, 1892). Last birthday dinner at Mickle Street. December, catches pneumonia.

March, Walt Whitman dies at Mickle Street; 30 March, buried in Harleigh Cemetery, Camden, New Jersey.

"Song of Myself“ is a poem by Walt Whitman.

“Song of myself” Today it is one of the best known poems in the book

“Poem of Walt Whitman, on America”

“Song of Myself” is a sprawling combination of biography, sermon, and poetic meditation.

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