Whitman was born in Long Island, New York, in 1819,

the second son of a large family with a total of nine

children. In 1823 his family was forced to go to Brooklyn,
where his father worked as a carpenter and he attended
for six years at elementary
school. From the age of
twelve, he works in the office
of a lawyer and at fourteen he
becomes an apprentice at a
printing press. At about the
same time he enrolled in a
library reading room, where
he has the opportunity to
discover many classics but also younger writers.
In 1835 he returned to Long-Island where he worked as
a teacher. At the same time, he founded the Long-
Islander newspaper, of which he is also the director,
editor and print writer. In 1849, head of a small printing
house, he published the newspaper Freeman. The next
year, however, he is re-orientated and becomes a
carpenter, building houses that he later sells. In 1854, he
seems to be abandoning every work and processing his
first poetic collection of Leaves of Grass, which was
published in 1855 at Whitman's personal expenses. In
this first version, the collection includes twelve
extensive untitled poems and receives mostly negative
reviews while only one copy is sold.
 In the period of the American Civil War, Whitman
works as a volunteer nurse and cares for injured soldiers
mainly in the Washington area. In the summer of 1866,
Whitman handles the fourth edition of the Chloe Leaves
during his Brooklyn vacation. In the context of this new
review, it differentiates certain titles and proceeds with
a numbering to make the project a unity. It is finally
published in 1867 at his own expense. There are four
more editions, and in 1891 the last one in series, is quite
voluminous including more than four hundred poems,
and is accompanied by a wider acceptance of Whitman
that has gradually been achieved.
As early as 1870, Witman's health had begun to
sharpen considerably. He died in 1892 and his quote
from a poem is written in his grave (which he himself
designed).

My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite;

I laugh at what you call dissolution;
And I know the amplitude of time.