10 de marzo de 2017

A STUDENT DISCOVERS A LOST NOVEL OF THE POET WALT WHITMAN OF 165 YEARS AGO

'Life and Adventures of Jack Engle', which chronicles the adventures of an orphan, was 165 years abandoned. The book anticipates 'Leaves of grass', one of the summits of modern lyric. Walt Whitman, born in 1819 and died in 1892, was a journalist, typographer, carpenter, teacher and creator of pamphlets, the father of modern American poetry took years to find himself. Before entering eternity in 1855 with Leaves of Grass, Whitman looked for in a heterogeneous set of writings that soon would condemn to the oblivion. One of these works, lost since 1852, has just reappeared. It is a novel entitled Life and Adventures of Jack Engle. 36,000 unheard-of words and after 165 years in the dark have been recovered by the almost detective work of a graduate of the University of Houston. On March 13, 1852, page 3 of The New York Daily Times, an advertisement appeared. The box reported the forthcoming publication of a novel by chapters in a rival newspaper, The Sunday Dispach. It was the "revealing and entertaining" Life and Adventures of Jack Engle. A story in the first person of the adventures of an orphan and promising, with Spanish dancer included, good doses of crime and love. The Dickensian tone and anonymous authorship was a flower of a day. Once printed (and it is not known whether praised or reviled) he fell into oblivion. It never took the form of a book or was reprinted. The story would take a century and a half to find a reader again. The finding was made by a PhD student, Zachary Turpin of the University of Houston.


  • Ainhoa Peregrín and Pablo Miranda

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