Book Description

Absorbing as biography, invaluable as reference, this latest volume in the distinguished series that began publication in 1906continues Traubel's minute, detailed, day-by-day account of America's greatest poet. William White, editor of the Walt Whit­man Review and coeditor of The Collected Writings of Walt Whitman, assumed the editorial chores when Gertrude Traubel was un­able to continue the project. Traubel wrote of the work that had absorbed so much of her life: "Vitality, contemporaneity--these Whitman characteris­tics--bring him to you not just an old man reliving a memora­ble career, but--like most seers--looking at events before him with flashes of prophetic insight." Volume 6presents the period from September 15, 1889, to July 6, 1890, with virtual transcripts of the conversations of Whitman with Traubel. Whitman's thoughts and opinions, reminiscences, his goings and comings, letters he received and wrote, and hundreds of other matters as well as important de­tails of his life in his home on Mickle Street in Camden. This series is indispensable for an understanding of and insight into the life and opinions of Walt Whitman. Horace Traubel fulfilled Whitman's charge "to speak for me when I am dead," in a manner without precedent.