Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • Walt Whitman: The Life and Legacy of One of America’s Most Influential Poets

  • By: Charles River Editors
  • Narrated by: Scott Clem
  • Length: 1 hr and 14 mins
Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Walt Whitman: The Life and Legacy of One of America’s Most Influential Poets cover art

Walt Whitman: The Life and Legacy of One of America’s Most Influential Poets

By: Charles River Editors
Narrated by: Scott Clem
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £6.39

Buy Now for £6.39

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

Old Thunder cover art
Joy cover art
Margaret Fuller cover art
Charles Dickens and the Making of 'A Christmas Carol' cover art
Looking for Lorraine cover art
The Young Hemingway cover art
Defiant Joy cover art
Rebel Souls cover art
Nabokov in America cover art
The Road to Monticello cover art
Simply Dirac cover art
The Man Who Invented Fiction cover art
A Life Observed cover art
Louisa May Alcott cover art
The Sun and the Moon cover art
The Prodigy cover art

Summary

“The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.” – Walt Whitman
 

Walt Whitman, the great American poet, is also in many ways a great American enigma compared to other famous men from the 19th century in American history. On the one hand, he was the product of something of an all-American family, the sort of salt of the earth people he would later describe so vividly in his work. On the other, he was a complete bohemian and profligate, given to vanity in the way he dressed and lived. He started out his career as a school teacher and was later a newspaper man, but he left both those types of work for a job as a government bureaucrat. As a young man, when most of his peers were sowing their wild oats, he was considered by many to be a stick in the mud who neither drank nor chased women. Then, as a middle-aged man, when his peers had settled down into quieter lives, he remained single and seems to have pursued romantic relationships with both men and women.  

Then, of course, there was his poetry, words that summarized both the best and worst about his nation. His seminal work, Leaves of Grass, began as little more than a pamphlet, but grew for decades as each new edition added more poems. By the time of his death, it had become a large volume and it is still studied today. While he wrote other pieces for publication, Leaves of Grass remained his magnum opus and his baby, and he nurtured and developed it throughout his life. And yet, through it all, the title remained the same self-deprecating play on words that he had given it when he first self-published the work in 1855.  

©2018 Charles River Editors (P)2018 Charles River Editors

What listeners say about Walt Whitman: The Life and Legacy of One of America’s Most Influential Poets

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.