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Life and Adventures of Jack Engle

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Life and Adventures of Jack Engle
Cover of the 2017 book printing
AuthorWalt Whitman
GenreCity mystery
PublisherNew York Sunday Dispatch (newspaper serial)
University of Iowa Press (book)
Publication date
1852 (newspaper serial)
2017 (book)

Life and Adventures of Jack Engle: An Auto-Biography: A Story of New York at the Present Time in Which the Reader Will Find Some Familiar Characters is a city mystery novel by Walt Whitman. It was first published anonymously in 1852 as a serial in a newspaper before being rediscovered in 2017, when it was reprinted in journal article and book form.

Background

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Advertisement promoting Life and Adventures of Jack Engle by Walt Whitman in The New York Times, March 13, 1852

Life and Adventures of Jack Engle was first published anonymously in serial form in the New York Sunday Dispatch newspaper from March 14 to April 18, 1852. It was advertised in The New York Times as a "Rich Revelation" and an "Auto-Biography."[1]

It was unknown and not republished until in 2017 in the academic journal Walt Whitman Quarterly Review after it was rediscovered by University of Houston[2] graduate student Zachary Turpin as a work by Whitman.[3][4]

Reprinting and reception

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After its rediscovery, Jennifer Schuessler in The New York Times called the work a "quasi-Dickensian tale" with "more than a few unlikely plot twists and jarring narrative shifts".[5] Turpin called it "a fun, rollicking, creative, twisty, bizarre little book".[6] In 2017 the story was published in book form, edited and introduced by Turpin, by the University of Iowa Press in its Iowa Whitman Series.[7] There is yet little literary scholarship on the novel; the first two critical essays to deal with the novel—authored by Stefan Schöberlein and Stephanie M. Blalock,[8] and Scott T. Zukowski[9]—appeared in the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review in 2020.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Advertisement promoting "Life and Adventures of Jack Engle" by Walt Whitman in The New York Times, March 13, 1852.
  2. ^ Ward, Alyson (February 20, 2017). "UH grad student discovers novel by Walt Whitman". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved February 21, 2017.
  3. ^ Schuessler, Jennifer (February 20, 2017). "In a Walt Whitman Novel, Lost for 165 Years, Clues to 'Leaves of Grass'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 21, 2017.
  4. ^ Turpin, Zachary (2017). "Introduction to Walt Whitman's 'Life and Adventures of Jack Engle'". Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. 34 (3): 225–261. doi:10.13008/0737-0679.2247.
  5. ^ Schuessler, Jennifer (February 20, 2017). "In a Walt Whitman Novel, Lost for 165 Years, Clues to 'Leaves of Grass'". The New York Times. Retrieved February 21, 2017.
  6. ^ Kean, Danuta (February 21, 2017). "Walt Whitman's lost novel The Life and Adventures of Jack Engle found". The Guardian. Retrieved February 21, 2017.
  7. ^ Whitman, Walt (2017). Zachary Turpin (ed.). Life and Adventures of Jack Engle: An Auto-Biography; A Story of New York at the Present Time in which the Reader Will Find Some Familiar Characters. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. ISBN 9781609385118.
  8. ^ Schöberlein, Stefan; Blalock, Stephanie (May 25, 2020). "'A Story of New York at the Present Time': The Historico-Literary Contexts of Jack Engle". Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. 37 (3): 145–184. doi:10.13008/0737-0679.2372. ISSN 0737-0679.
  9. ^ Zukowski, Scott (May 25, 2020). "Walt Whitman, Trinity Church, and Antebellum Reprint Culture". Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. 37 (3): 185–224. doi:10.13008/0737-0679.2373. ISSN 0737-0679.
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