Henry Scholey Saunders (1864–1951)
100 Whitman Photographs
Toronto: Published by the author, 1939
Susan Jaffe Tane Collection of Walt Whitman, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
100 Whitman Photographs
The American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) was acutely aware of the power of portraiture. In 1855 he self-published Leaves of Grass with the famous (and, for the time, shocking) frontispiece portrait of him as a bohemian “rough.” He became fascinated with photography in the 1840s, and he sat for portraits regularly throughout his life, ultimately becoming the most photographed literary figure of the 19th century. “No man has been photographed more than I have,” he claimed. Whitman almost always appeared in photographs alone, but this album page includes an unusual portrait of the poet with Pete Doyle, Whitman’s lover during the 1860s and 70s. This album was arranged, bound, and issued by the collector Henry S. Saunders.
: Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
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