OPINION: A newly found lost novel by Walt Whitman
A long-forgotten novel penned by Walt Whitman, who was the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle before the Civil War, is making its way into the hands of new readers, following a surprising discovery of the early-career serial in a now defunct New York newspaper.
“The Life and Adventures of Jack Engle” was re-published Monday, nearly 165 years after it first ran as a newspaper serial. While the work, which follows the story of an orphan who takes revenge against a corrupt lawyer, lacks the nuanced insight and style of Mr. Whitman’s later poetry, it sheds a light on the artistic process of a younger Whitman experimenting to find his voice.
“It’s like seeing the workshop of a great writer,” Ed Folsom, the editor of The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, which published the piece online, told The New York Times. “We’re discovering the process of Whitman’s own discovery.”
The work will also be reprinted in both hardcopy and paperback by the Iowa University Press.