Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate

Whitman Walt Whitman

Description

Not many people know that Walt Whitman-arguably the preeminent American poet of the nineteenth century-began his literary career as a novelist. Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate: A Tale of the Times was his first and only novel. Published in 1842, during a period of widespread temperance activity, it became Whitman's most popular work during his lifetime, selling some twenty thousand copies.The novel tells the rags-to-riches story of Franklin Evans, an innocent young man from the Long Island countryside who seeks his fortune in New York City. Corrupted by music halls, theaters, and above all taverns, he gradually becomes a drunkard. Until the very end of the tale, Evans's efforts to abstain fail, and each time he resumes drinking, another series of misadventures ensues. Along the way, Evans encounters a world of mores and conventions rapidly changing in response to the vicissitudes of slavery, investment capital, urban mass culture, and fervent reform. Although Evans finally signs a temperance pledge, his sobriety remains haunted by the often contradictory and unsettling changes in antebellum American culture.The editors' substantial introduction situates Franklin Evans in relation to Whitman's life and career, mid-nineteenth-century American print culture, and many of the developments and institutions the novel depicts, including urbanization, immigration, slavery, the temperance movement, and new understandings of class, race, gender, and sexuality. This edition includes a short temperance story Whitman published at about the same time as he did Franklin Evans, the surviving fragment of what appears to be another unfinished temperance novel by Whitman, and a temperance speech Abraham Lincoln gave the same year that Franklin Evans was published.

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 17 juillet 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822389989
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 87 Mo

Extrait

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Edited by Christopher Castiglia and Glenn Hendler

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Introduction, Selection of Texts, Notes, and Bibliography ©  Duke University Press

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper  Designed by Jennifer Hill Typeset in Bulmer by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

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Acknowledgments

ix Introduction Christopher Castiglia and Glenn Hendler

             ,      A Tale of the Times

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             The Madman

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The Child and the Profligate

An Address Delivered by Abraham Lincoln Before the Springfield Washingtonian Temperance Society, at the Second Presbyterian Church, Springfield, Illinois, On the d Day of February, 

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Bibliography

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              would like to thank Nick Hurley and Kristen Egan for their research assistance.            thanks Cheryl Reed for transcription of the text, Brooke Cameron for help with proofreading and re- search, and the American Antiquarian Society for supporting work on this volume through an/Northeastern Modern Language Association Fellow- ship. The editors would like to thank Leo Blake of the Walt Whitman House, Camden, New Jersey, John Powell of the Newberry Library, Chicago, and Paul Rascoe of the Tanner Library, University of Texas, Austin, for their assis- tance with images. And to the ever-patient Ken Wissoker, our deepest thanks.

            Christopher Castiglia and Glenn Hendler

T mere existence ofFranklin Evans, or The Inebriatewill surprise many readers, even students and scholars well versed in nineteenth-century Ameri- can literature and culture. Of course, Whitman specialists have always been aware of the book’s place in what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the ‘‘long foreground’’ preceding Whitman’s poetic career, and social historians have placed it on their lists of writings devoted to the cause of temperance. Beyond such scholars, few know that more than a decade before making his mark as a poet with the publication ofLeaves of Grass, Whitman was heralded as ‘‘one of the best Novelists of this country.’’Franklin Evansforces those who thought they knew about Whitman, and about nineteenth-century American literature and culture in general, to look closely at both the text itself and the rich and complex context its existence reveals. What biographical, social, and cultural factors would lead Whitman to write a full-length temperance novel in ? Why did he and his publishers believe thatFranklin Evanswould ‘‘create a sensation’’ and get ‘‘the widest circulation,’’ as the book’s publicity promised? How might such a publication have been received in ? And why should we read this novel today?

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Walter Whitman, Jr., was born on May , , to Walter and Louisa Van Vel- sor Whitman; he was the second of eight children who survived infancy. Whit- man’s father was descended from farmers who emigrated from England in the