The New York Public Library Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature Guide to the Walt Whitman papers 1854-1892 Summary Creator: Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892 Title: Walt Whitman papers Date: 1854-1892 Source: Most of the Whitman material in the Berg was acquired by W. T. H. Howe of Cincinnati, the president of the American Book Company, who purchased it from the Harvard professor and Atlantic Monthly editor Bliss Perry (1860-1954). Perry also authored the first scholarly biography of Whitman. He undertook the project at the request of the Houghton Miflin publishing firm, after John Burroughs (1837-1921), the American naturalist and friend of Whitman, withdrew from his contract. Burroughs then gave Perry much of the research material he had collected. Presumably it was this material that Howe acquired. The Howe collection was purchased by Albert A. Berg following Howe's death in 1940 and was donated to the Berg Collection in the same year. Other Whitman items in the Berg come from the donated collections of the Berg brothers and the partly purchased, partly donated, collection of Owen D. Young (1941), Chairman of the Board of the General Electric Company.. Abstract: This is a synthetic collection covering the years 1854 to 1892 with some material still undated. Strengths of the collection include nearly 30 poems or poem fragments and Whitman's autograph revision of the "Analysis of Poems" by Dr. R. Bucke. This essay was written for Bucke's authorized biography (Walt Whitman, 1883) and Whitman's extensive revisions were incorporated before publication. The correspondence includes two longer runs, one to William O' Connor and the other to his wife Ellen O'Connor. The O'Connors were active in a number of social causes, as well as devoted advocates of Whitman and his writing. William O'Connor, author of The Good Gray Poet (1866), was one of Whitman's closest friends until an argument in 1873 caused a break in their friendship. Others who figure prominently in the Berg Collection's Whitman materials include John Burroughs (1837-1921), nature writer, literary critic, and author of Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person (1867); Peter Doyle and Harry Stafford, young friends of Whitman's; and Richard Maurice Bucke (1837-1902), Whitman's authorized biographer, friend and literary executor. In addition to writing Walt Whitman (1883) and Walt Whitman, Man and Poet (1897), Bucke co-edited with Horace Traubel and Thomas Harned The Complete Writings (1902).