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.”