Walt Whitman Lecture at the Rylands
15 Apr 2025
The Rylands Library recently held a public lecture on our collections relating to Walt Whitman, American poet, journalist and essayist.
The lecture was delivered on Wednesday, 2 April, by Leverhulme Professor Karen Karbiener, who is visiting The University of Manchester on a fellowship from New York University. Karen is engaged on writing a biography of Walt Whitman and has been delighted and hugely enthusiastic about the material we hold. It’s been a great pleasure to support her research, and to work with her on the lecture, and two supporting student workshops. Karen was very excited about a particular find of a carted visite in our collection, and has written a guest post for the Rylands blog about it (no spoilers!).
We hope these events will encourage researchers and students at the University, as well as new Whitman scholars, to make use of our collections.
The Whitman Collections at the Rylands
Our collections were mostly amassed by an admirer of Walt Whitman’s, Charles Sixsmith, and donated to the Rylands in 1954. Sixsmith was a member of the Bolton Whitman Fellowship, a late 19th century group of likeminded Whitman enthusiasts, essentially Whitman’s first UK fan club, several of whom corresponded with and visited Whitman, and collected material relating to him. Whitman’s UK admirers were important in promoting him as a poet and encouraging the reception of his work. The material given to us by Sixsmith also features the works of English poet and gay rights activist, Edward Carpenter, another admirer and friend of Walt Whitman
The Walt Whitman rare book collection contains 350 items of work by or about Walt Whitman, with 22 different editions of Leaves of Grass alone, including a first edition. There are also 100 works of criticism, and around 70 other works by Whitman.
We also hold two collections of papers relating to Whitman and the Bolton Whitman Fellowship, amassed by its leader James William Wallace and by Charles Sixsmith, which include letters sent to Whitman and his friend Horace L. Traubel, and a manuscript of an account of Wallace’s visit to meet Whitman. There are a collection of photographs, and a number of objects, or relics, including Whitman’s hat lining, his pen nibs, and a button, which curator Anne Anderton demonstrates.