Specimen Days

'I obey my happy hour's command, which seems curiously imperative. May-be, if I don't do anything else, I shall send out the most wayward, spontaneous, fragmentary book ever printed.'One of the best kept secrets of modern autobiographical literature, Whitman's autobiography moves in brisk, episodic fashion to chronicle the life of one of the world's best loved and most influential poets. Experimental in form, lyrical in expression, and rich in experiential content, Specimen Days still awaits a much wider readership than it has hitherto commanded. Whitman gives us his life as lived in relation to the shifting urban and rural ecologies of a young nation -a nation that had freshly emerged from catastrophic civil war and that was assuming the vanguard of artistic, technological, economic, political, and philosophical modernity.-A lively introduction which explains why Specimen Days is one of the great 19th-century autobiographies and why it should be considered an early Modernist autobiography, and gives a clear account of its relation to autobiographical literature as well as to Whitman's own life and other writings-Includes extensive explanatory notes to provide important context and background information for readers unfamiliar with 19th-century history and literature-Provides a glossary of persons mentioned which identifies almost every person referred to in Specimen Days and gives a brief account of their significance to Whitman-Shares an insight into Whitman's international reception and his own understanding of American national identity through the inclusion of the two prefaces that Whitman wrote for the British edition of Specimen DaysIntroductionNote on the TextSelect BibliographyA Chronology of Walt WhitmanSPECIMEN DAYSAppendix A: "Preface. To the Reader in the British Islands"Appendix B: "Additional Note. Written 1887 for the English Edition"Explanatory NotesGlossary of Persons Mentioned Cover OWC series page Specimen Days Copyright Acknowledgements Contents Introduction Note on the Text Select Bibliography A Chronology of Walt Whitman Specimen Days Contents A Happy Hour’s Command Answer to an Insisting Friend Genealogy — Van Velsor and Whitman The Old Whitman and Van Velsor Cemeteries The Maternal Homestead Two Old Family Interiors Paumanok, and My Life on It as Child and Young Man My First Reading — Lafayette Printing Office — Old Brooklyn Growth — Health — Work My Passion for Ferries Broadway Sights Omnibus Jaunts and Drivers Plays and Operas too Through Eight Years Sources of Character — Results — 1860 Opening of the Secession War National Uprising and Volunteering Contemptuous Feeling Battle of Bull Run, July, 1861 The Stupor Passes — Something Else Begins Down at the Front After First Fredericksburg Back to Washington Fifty Hours Left Wounded on the Field Hospital Scenes and Persons Patent-Office Hospital The White House by Moonlight An Army Hospital Ward A Connecticut Case Two Brooklyn Boys A Secesh Brave The Wounded from Chancellorsville A Night Battle, over a Week Since Unnamed Remains the Bravest Soldier Some Specimen Cases My Preparations for Visits Ambulance Processions Bad Wounds — the Young The Most Inspiriting of All War’s Shows Battle of Gettysburg A Cavalry Camp A New York Soldier Home-Made Music Abraham Lincoln Heated Term Soldiers and Talks Death of A Wisconsin Officer Hospitals Ensemble A Silent Night Ramble Spiritual Characters Among the soldiers Cattle Droves About Washington Hospital Perplexity Down at the Front Paying the Bounties Rumors, Change, &C. Virginia Summer of 1864 A New Army Organization Fit for America Death of A Hero Hospital Scenes — Incidents A Yankee Soldier Union Prisoners South Deserters A Glimpse of War's Hell-Scenes Gifts — Money — Discrimination Items from My Note Books A Case from Second Bull Run Army Surgeons — Aid Deficiencies The Blue Everywhere A Model Hospital Boys in the Army Burial of a Lady Nurse Female Nurses for Soldiers Southern Escapees The Capitol by Gas-Light The Inauguration Attitude of Foreign Governments During the War The Weather — Does It Sympathize with These Times? Inauguration Ball Scene at the Capitol A Yankee Antique Wounds and Diseases Death of President Lincoln* Sherman’s Army’s Jubilation — its Sudden Stoppage No Good Portrait of Lincoln Releas’d Union Prisoners from South Death of a Pennsylvania Soldier The Armies Returning The Grand Review Western Soldiers A Soldier on Lincoln Two Brothers, One South, One North Some Sad Cases yet Calhoun’s Real Monument Hospitals Closing Typical Soldiers “Convulsiveness” Three Years Summ’d up The Million Dead, too, Summ’d up The Real War Will Never Get in the Books An Interregnum Paragraph New Themes Entered Upon Entering a Long Farm-Lane To the Spring and Brook An Early Summer Reveille Birds Migrating at Midnight Bumble-Bees Cedar-Apples Summer Sights and Indolencies Sundown Perfume — Quail-Notes — the Hermit-Thrush A July Afternoon by the Pond Locusts and KatyDids The Lesson of a Tree Autumn Side-Bits The Sky — Days and Nights — Happiness Colors — A Contrast November 8, ’76 Crows and Crows A Winter Day on the Sea-Beach Sea-Shore Fancies In Memory of Thomas Paine A Two Hours’ Ice-Sail Spring Overtures — Recreations One of the Human Kinks An Afternoon Scene The Gates Opening The Common Earth, the Soil Birds and Birds and Birds Full-Starr’d Nights Mulleins and Mulleins Distant Sounds A Sun-Bath — Nakedness The Oaks and I A Quintette The First Frost — Mems Three Young Men’s Deaths February Days A Meadow Lark Sundown Lights Thoughts Under an Oak—A Dream Clover and Hay Perfume An Unknown Bird-Whistling Horse-Mint Three of Us Death of William Cullen Bryant Jaunt up the Hudson Happiness and Raspberries A Specimen Tramp Family Manhattan From the Bay Human and Heroic New York Hours for the Soul Straw-Color'd and Other Psyches A Night Remembrance Wild Flowers A Civility too Long Neglected Delware River — Days and Nights Scenes on Ferry and River — Last Winter's Nights The First Spring day on chestnut Street Up the Hudson to Ulster County Days at J. B. 's — Turf-Fires — Spring Songs Melting a Hermit An Ulster County Waterfall Walter Dumont and his Medal Hudson River Sights Two City Areas, Certain Hours Central Park Walks and Talks A Fine Afternoon, 4 to 6 Departing of the Big Steamers Two Hours on the Minnesota Mature Summer Days and Nights Exposition Building — New City Hall — River Trip Swallows on the River Begin a Long Jaunt West In the Sleeper Missouri State Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas The Prairies—and an Undeliver’d Speech On to Denver — A Frontier Incident An Hour on Kenosha Summit An Egotistical "Find" New Senses — New Joys Steam-Power, Telegraphs, &C. America's Back-Bone The Parks Art Features Denver Impressions I Turn Sourth — and Then East Again Unfulfill'd Wants — The Arkansas River A Silent Little Follower — The Corepsis The Prairies and Great Plains in Poetry The Spanish Peaks — Evening on the Plains America's Characteristic Landscape Prairie Analogues — The Tree Question Mississippi Valley Literature An Interviewer's Item The Women of the West The silent General President Haye's Speeches St. Louis Memoranda Nights on the Mississippi Upom our Own Land Edgar Poe's Significance Beethoven's Septette* A Hint of Wild Nature Loafing in the Woods A Contralto Voice Seeing Niagara to Advantage Jaunting to Canada Sunday with the Insane Reminisence of Elias Hicks Grand Native Growth A Zollerein Between the U. S. and Canada The St. Lawrence Line The Savage Saguenay Capes Eternity and Trinity Chicoutimi and Ha-Ha-bay The Inhabitants — Good Living Cedar-Plums Like — Names Death of Thomas Carlyle Carlyle from American Points of View A Couple of Old Friend — A Coleridge Bit A Week's Visit to Boston The Boston of To-Day My Tribute to four Poets Millet's Pictures — Last Items Birds — and A Caution Samples of my Common-Place Book My Native Sand and Salt Once More Hot Weather New York "Custer's Last Rally" Some Old Acqaintances — Memories A Discovery of Old Age A Visit, at the Last, To R. W. Emerson Other Concord Notations Boston Common — More of Emerson An Ossianic Night — Dearest Friends Only A New Ferry Boat Death of Longfellow Starting Newspapers The Great Unrest of which we are Part By Emerson's Grave At Present Writing — Personal After Trying a Certain Book Final Confessions — Literary Tests Nature and Democracy — Morality Appendix A: Preface. To the Reader in the British Islands Appendix B: Additional Note. Written 1887for the English Edition Explanatory Notes Glossary of Persons 'I obey my happy hour's command, which seems curiously imperative. May-be, if I don't do anything else, I shall send out the most wayward, spontaneous, fragmentary book ever printed.' One of the best kept secrets of modern autobiographical literature, Whitman's autobiography moves in brisk, episodic fashion to chronicle the life of one of the world's best loved and most influential poets. Experimental in form, lyrical in expression, and rich in experiential content, Specimen Days still awaits a much wider readership than it has hitherto commanded. Whitman gives us his life as lived in relation to the shifting urban and rural ecologies of a young nation -a nation that had freshly emerged from catastrophic civil war and that was assuming the vanguard of artistic, technological, economic, political, and philosophical modernity. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.