Wage Slavery and the Composition of Leaves of Grass: The "Talbot Wilson" Notebook

Abstract

Examines Whitman's Talbot Wilson notebook, recently recovered by the Library of Congress, and challenges the usual dating of the notebook in the 1840s, arguing instead that the poetic notes were written much closer to 1855; reassesses the significance of the notebook, especially its statements about race and and argues that slavery plays a very minor role in the notebook, that Whitman is far more concerned with issues of ownership and the soul, and that discussions of slavery, when they do appear, seem to be as much connected to working-class wage-slavery rhetoric as to Free Soil anti-chattel-slavery rhetoric.