May Literary Birthdays

WALT WHITMAN
May 31, 1819 - March 26, 1892

Walt Whitman was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. Proclaimed the "greatest of all American poets" by many foreign observers a mere four years after his death, he is viewed as the first urban poet. He was a part of the transition between Trancendentalism and Realism, incorporating both views in his works. His work has been described as a "rude shock" and "the most audacious and debatable contribution yet made to American literature."

Some of his works:
Drum Taps
Good-Bye, My Fancy
Leaves of Grass
Complete Prose Works
Democratic Vistas
Memoranda During the War
Specimen Days and Collect

Search for his books


Other Literary Birthdays

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London-born Booker Prize winning novelist Graham Swift (1949)
Seattle-born novelist David Gutterson (1956)
British poet Robert Browning (1812)
British historian Edward Gibbon (1737)
San-Francisco-born Pulitzer-prize winning poet Gary Snyder (1930)
NY-born novelist Thomas Pynchon (1937)
Yugoslavian-born, Pulitzer-prize-winning poet Charles Simic (1938)
Nonsense poet Edward Lear (1812)
British novelist Daphne Du Maurier (1907)
British travel writer and novelist Bruce Chatwin (1940)
San-Francisco Chronicle columnist and novelist Armistead Maupin (1944)
Oz creator L.Frank Baum (1856)
Russian (Ukrainian) novelist/satirist Mikhail Bulgakov (1891)
Oral historian and Bronx-native Studs Terkel (1912)
British philosopher, mathematician, pacifist, and author Bertrand Russell (1872)
French novelist Honoré de Balzac (1799)
Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265)
Scottish-born physician, novelist, and historian Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859)
NYC-born writer Peter Matthiessen (1927)
Nobel Prize winning Russian poet Joseph Brodsky (1940)
American transcendentalist, essayist, philosopher, and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803)
Oregonian short-story writer and poet Raymond Carver (1938)
French novelist and physician Louis Ferdinand Céline (1894)
James Bond creator and Brit Ian Fleming (1908)