The Modern Man I Sing

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Walt Whitman and the Humanities

A Chronology: 1819 - 1892

By Carla Maria Verdino-Süllwold

1819

Walt Whitman born May 31, West Hills Township, Huntington, L.I.

Theodore Gericault shocks Paris Salon with the Raft of Medusa

John Keats begins his major Odes

 

1821

Napoleon Bonaparte dies May 5

 

1822

Percy Bysshe Shelley drowns near Livorno

 

1823

Walt Whitman family moves to Brooklyn

Monroe Doctrine

 

1836

Ralph Waldo Emerson publishes Nature

 

1824

John Quincy Adams elected U.S. President

George Gordon, Lord Byron dies at Missilonghi in fight for Greek independence

 

1825

Marquis de Lafayette makes triumphal tour of U.S.; sits six-year-old Walt Whitman on his knee and kisses him in Brooklyn visit

Thomas Cole & Asher B. Durand found Hudson River School of nature painters

William Hazlitt writes The Spirit of the Age

Erie Canal completed

 

1827

Heinrich Heine publishes Das Buch der Lieder

Ludwig van Beethoven dies March 21

Franz Schubert composes Winterreise

 

1828

Andrew Jackson elected U.S. President

 

1829

Gioacchino Rossini premieres Guillaume Tell

 

1830

July Revolution in Paris; unrest throughout Europe

Eugäne Delacroix paints Liberty on the Barricades

 

1831

Giacomo Meyerbeer premieres Robert le Diable

Henri de Stendhal publishes Le Rouge et le Noir

William Lloyd Garrison founds the Liberator

 

1832

Frederic Chopin debuts as a pianist in Paris

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe dies March 22

 

1833

Thomas Carlyle publishes Sartor Resartus

American Anti-Slavery Society founded in Philadelphia

 

1834

Hector Berlioz composes Les Nuits d'Ete

Robert Schumann founds Neue Zeitschrift fÅr Musik

 

1835

Walt Whitman works as a printer

Samuel Morse invents the telegraph

 

1836

Walt Whitman begins five-year stint as a teacher in rural Long Island

Communist League founded

 

1837

Victoria crowned Queen of England

 

1840

Auguste Rodin born November 12

 

1842

Walt Whitman edits various New York papers, among them The Aurora, The Tattler, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, writing editorials, hard news, music, theatre, and arts criticism, political pieces, and fiction

 

1844

Giuseppe Verdi composes Ernani

 

1846

Elias Howe invents the sewing machine

 

1848

Walt Whitman goes to new Orleans with brother Jeff to work for New Orleans Crescent; stays only three months

Mexican War breaks out

Communist Manifesto published

Honore de Balzac writes La Comedie Humaine

Uprisings throughout Europe

 

1849

Alfred, Lord Tennyson completes In Memoriam

 

1850

Nathaniel Hawthorne completes The Scarlet Letter

 

1851

Henry W. Longfellow publishes The Golden Legend

 

1853

Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom's Cabin to stir Abolistionist cause

Herman Melville completes Bartleby the Scrivener

 

1854

Charles Dickens publishes Hard Times

Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden

 

1855

Walt Whitman self-publishes first edition of Leaves of Grass; Emerson lends his support; meets Thoreau

 

1856

Walt Whitman publishes second edition of Leaves of Grass

Heinrich Heine & Robert Schumann die

 

1857

Walt Whitman edits Brooklyn Times; frequents Pfaff's, a bohemian literary hangout; haunts the docks, ferries, and baths of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn

Charles Baudelaire publishes Les Fleurs deu Mal

 

1858

Giacomo Puccini born December 23

Lincoln-Douglas Presidential debates

African-American Painter Henry Ossawa Tanner born August 19

 

1859

Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of the Species

Washington Irving dies

John Brown's attempt to free slaves fails; hanged

 

1860

Walt Whitman goes to Boston to oversee third edition of Leaves of Grass, refusing to omit Children of Adam poems

Frederic E. Church paints Twighlight in the Wilderness

Garribaldi proclaims unified Italy under Victor Emmanuel

 

1861

American Civil War breaks out

Seward's Folly, Alaska, purchased from Russia

Frederic Remington born

 

1862

Walt Whitman goes to front to find his wounded brother Goerge; nurses war casualties in military hospitals

 

1863

Walt Whitman stays in Washington, D.C., 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; publishes Drum Taps; meets and forms close relationship with Peter Doyle

Abraham Lincoln assasinated April 15

Richard Wagner premieres Tristan

 

1866

John Greenleaf Whittier writes Snowbound

 

1867

Walt Whitman publishes fourth edition of Leaves of Grass

 

1868

Gioacchino Rossini dies November 13

 

1869

U.S. Transcontinetal Railroad completed; Suez Canal opened

 

1870

English author, friend of Rossettis and widow of Blake's biographer, Anne Gilchrist publishes A Woman's Estimate of Walt Whitman, a feminist defense, in Boston Radical.

Modest Musorgsky completes Boris Godunov

 

1871

Walt Whitman publishes fifth edition of Leaves of Grass and Democratic Vistas

Anne Gilchrist writes her first love letter

 

1872

Ralph Vaughan Williams born

Friedrich Nietzsche publishes Birth of Tragedy

 

1873

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

 

1874

Charles Ives born

 

1875

Thomas Eakins paints The Gross Clinic

Georges Bizet premieres Carmen and dies three months later

 

1876

Walt Whitman publishes sixth edition of Leaves of Grass; begins last of relationships with young men with Harry Stafford; meets his amuensis, Horace Traubel

Anne Gilchrist comes to Philadelphia in hopes of marrying Whitman, only to return in 1879 after it becomes apparent a platonic bond was all she could hope for

Thomas Edison invents the phonograph

Richard Wagner inaugurates the first bayreuth Festival with his Ring

 

1878

William Cullen Bryant dies

 

1879

Walt Whitman, in better health, takes off on a year's lecture tour

Josef Stalin born December 21

 

1881

Walt Whitman publishes seventh edition of Leaves of Grass and Specimen Days

 

1882

Frank Butcher born

James Joyce born February 2

Ralph Waldo Emerson dies April 27

 

1884

Walt Whitman buys his first home on Mickle Street in Camden

Mark Twain publishes Huckleberry Finn

 

1885

Anne Gilchrist dies in England

 

1886

Franz Liszt dies July 31

Henry Thacker Burleigh born December 2

 

1888

Walt Whitman suffers another paralytic stroke that leaves him bedridden

 

1889

Walt Whitman publishes eighth edition of Leaves of Grass

 

1892

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