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These four of Walt Whitman's early notebooks contain fragments of the poem "Song of Myself," trial lines of poetry and prose, Civil War hospital notes, and personal jottings on a wide range of subjects. The notebooks and a cardboard butterfly were returned to the Library of Congress in 1995, 50 years after they mysteriously disappeared from the Library's manuscript collections.

Summary of Resources

More About It!	Watch this space for more resources!
Special Presentations:	LC's Missing Whitman Notes Found in N.Y. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/gazette1.html Library Scans Whitman Items; Preserves Them http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/gazette2.html Conserving the Whitman Notebooks (Photo Series) http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/gazphoto.html Notebooks lost in 1942 and found in 1995 http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/lostfnd.html
Historical Eras:	The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1850-1877
Related Collections:	African-American Pamphlets, 1818-1907 Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865 Conservation Movement, 1850-1920 Daguerreotypes, 1842-1862 National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921
Center for the Book:	Watch this space for a Read More About It! Reading List.
Search Tip:	*The notebook pages appear just as Whitman wrote them, with no table of contents or index. Because there is no subject index for the collection, a page turner function has been added to help you search the notebooks.

Library of Congress URL: http://www.loc.gov/

Questions about American Memory? NDLP Reference Librarian: ndlpedu@loc.gov

Learn More About It: Walt Whitman Notebooks, 1847-1860s URL: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/ww/wwintro.html

Nov-20-96