Walt Whitman – Timeline

1819
Walt Whitman born May 31, West Hills Township, Huntington, Long Island
Théodore Géricault shocks Paris Salon with The Raft of Medusa
Keats begins his major odes

1821
Napoleon dies May 5

1822
Shelley drowns near Livorno

1823
Whitman family moves to Brooklyn
Monroe Doctrine

1824
John Quincy Adams elected U.S. President
Lord Byron dies at Missilonghi in fight for Greek independence

1825
Lafayette, on triumphal U.S. tour, sits 6-year-old Whitman on his knee and kisses him in Brooklyn visit
Thomas Cole & Asher B. Durand found Hudson River School of nature painters
Hazlitt writes The Spirit of the Age
Erie Canal completed

1826
Emerson publishes “Nature”

1827
Heine publishes Das Buch der Lieder
Beethoven dies March 21
Schubert composes Winterreise

1828
Andrew Jackson elected U.S. President

1829
Rossini premieres Guillaume Tell

1830
July Revolution in Paris
Unrest throughout Europe
Delacroix paints Liberty on the Barricades

1831
Meyerbeer premieres Robert le diable
Stendhal publishes Le Rouge et le Noir
William Lloyd Garrison founds the anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator

1832
Chopin debuts as a pianist in Paris
Goethe dies March 22

1833
Carlyle publishes Sartor Resartus
American Anti-Slavery Society founded in Philadelphia

1834
Berlioz composes Les nuits d’été
Schumann founds Neue Zeitschrift für Musik

1835
Whitman works as a printer
Samuel Morse invents the telegraph

1836
Whitman begins 5-year stint as a teacher in rural Long Island
Communist League founded

1837
Victoria crowned Queen of England

1840
Rodin born November 12

1842
Whitman edits such New York papers as The Aurora, The Tattler, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle, writing editorials, hard news, music, theatre, and arts criticism, political pieces, and fiction

1844
Emerson publishes “The Poet,” an essay that influential to Whitman
Verdi composes Ernani

1846
Howe invents the sewing machine

1848
Whitman goes to New Orleans with brother Jeff to work for the New Orleans Crescent and stays only three months
Mexican War breaks out
Communist Manifesto published
Balzac writes La Comédie humaine
Uprisings throughout Europe

1849
Tennyson completes “In Memoriam A. H. H.”

1850
Hawthorne completes The Scarlet Letter

1851
Longfellow publishes “The Golden Legend”

1853
Stowe publishes Uncle Tom’s Cabin to stir Abolitionist cause
Melville completes “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street”

1854
Dickens publishes Hard Times
Thoreau publishes Walden

1855
Whitman self-publishes first limited edition (12 poems) of Leaves of Grass on 4 July: no author cited; frontispiece shows WW in workman’s clothes; small copyright notice lists Walter Whitman; poems are untitled; Whitman meets Thoreau

1856
Whitman publishes second edition (over 400 pp.) of Leaves of Grass: author now listed as Walt Whitman; organized with table of contents and with Emerson’s letter of endorsement
Heine and Schumann die

1857
Whitman edits Brooklyn Times; frequents Pfaff’s, a bohemian literary hangout; haunts the docks, ferries, and baths of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn
Baudelaire publishes Les Fleurs du Mal

1858
Puccini born December 23
Lincoln-Douglas Presidential debates
African-American Painter Henry Ossawa Tanner born August 19

1859
Darwin publishes The Origin of the Species
Washington Irving dies
John Brown hanged after attempt to free slaves fails

1860
Whitman goes to Boston to oversee Thayer & Eldridge’s third edition (5000 copies) of Leaves of Grass; he refuses to omit “Children of Adam” poems
Frederic E. Church paints Twilight in the Wilderness
Garibaldi proclaims unified Italy under Victor Emmanuel

 

1861
American Civil War breaks out
Seward’s Folly, Alaska, purchased from Russia
Frederic Remington born

1862
Whitman goes to front to find his wounded brother George; nurses war casualties in military hospitals

1863
Whitman stays in Washington working in Army Paymaster’s Office and nursing soldiers until war ends
Emancipation Proclamation, January 1
Battle of Gettysburg, July 1-3, followed by Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, November 19
William H. Neidlinger born in Brooklyn

1865
Walt Whitman works as a clerk in the Bureau of Indian Affairs until he is discharged by James Harlan for being author of “indecent” Leaves of Grass; hired by Attorney General’s Office; resumes self-publication with Drum-Taps; meets and forms close relationship with Peter Doyle
Lincoln assassinated April 15
Wagner premieres Tristan and Isolde

1866
John Greenleaf Whittier writes Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl

1867
Whitman publishes fourth edition of Leaves of Grass: includes Drum-Taps and Lincoln poems

1868
William Rossetti publishes first British edition, Poems by Wait Whitman
Rossini dies November 13

1869
U.S. Transcontinental Railroad completed
Suez Canal opened

1870
English author, friend of Rossetti’s and widow of Blake’s biographer, Anne Gilchrist publishes “A Woman’s Estimate of Walt Whitman,” a feminist defense, in the Boston Radical
Mussorgsky completes Boris Godunov

1871
Whitman publishes fifth edition of Leaves of Grass; Democratic Vistas and “Passage to India” issued separately; Anne Gilchrist writes her first love letter

1872
Vaughan Williams born
Nietzsche publishes Birth of Tragedy

1873
Whitman suffers a paralytic stroke in January; his mother dies to May; goes to live with brother George in Camden, NJ

1874
Ives born

1875
Eakins paints The Gross Clinic
Bizet premieres Carmen and dies 3 months later

1876
Whitman publishes sixth (so-called “Centennial” edition—a reprint of 1871) of Leaves of Grass; begins last of relationships with young men with Harry Stafford; meets his amanuensis, Horace Traubel; Anne Gilchrist comes to Philadelphia to be near Whitman
Edison invents the phonograph
Wagner’s Ring inaugurates the first Bayreuth Festival

1878
William Cullen Bryant dies

1879
Whitman, in better health, takes off on a year’s lecture tour
Stalin born

1881
Whitman publishes seventh edition of Leaves of Grass; first attempt with commercial publisher Osgood stopped by Boston censor’s threats; WW regains plates and has Rees Welsh & Co. (later David McKay) of Philadelphia issue edition and publish diary, Specimen Days, separately
Joyce born February 2
Emerson dies April 27

1884
Whitman buys his first home on Mickle Street in Camden
Twain publishes Huckleberry Finn

1885
Anne Gilchrist dies in England

1886
Liszt dies July 31
Henry Thacker Burleigh born December 2

1888
Whitman publishes Complete Poems and Prose of Walt Whitman; suffers another paralytic stroke that leaves him bedridden

1889
Whitman publishes eighth edition of Leaves of Grass

1892
Whitman publishes ninth edition of Leaves of Grass, called the “Deathbed Edition”; he dies March 26 and is buried in Camden’s Harleigh Cemetery in an elaborate tomb he designed and bought with gifts from English friends