Allen, Gay Wilson, and Folsom, , Ed (eds), Walt Whitman and the World. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995. The best point of entry into the study of Whitman's international reputation, reception, and worldwide fame.
Aspiz, Harold, So Long!: Walt Whitman's Poetry of Death. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004. The fullest treatment of Whitman's elegiac work and the most balanced consideration of the influence of Protestant Christianity upon the poet.
Bauerlein, Mark, Whitman and the American Idiom. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991. A study informed by recent work in semiotics and poststructuralism that focuses on the language theories that Whitman explicitly encountered and entertained and those implicit in his poetry.
Beach, Christopher, The Politics of Distinction: Whitman and the Discourses of Nineteenth-Century America. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996. An attempt to unite the study of language and ideology in a critical look at race and slavery, urbanization, and the (sexual) body in Whitman's poetry and its historical context.
Burrows, Edwin G., and Wallace, Mike, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. The most up-to-date general history of the geographical and political setting for Whitman's life and works.
Ceniza, Sherry, Walt Whitman and 19th-Century Women Reformers. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998. A study of how women responded to Whitman's works in his own time, with a focus on specific women whom he influenced and who influenced him.
Davis, Robert Leigh, Whitman and the Romance of Medicine. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. A good treatment of how Whitman's experience in the Civil War hospitals influenced his poetry.
Erkkila, Betsy, Whitman the Political Poet. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. The most complete introduction to the political contexts of Whitman's writing; good coverage of political movements in his own day as well as the implications of his writings for recent social and political movements involving race, class, gender, and other topics.
Erkkila, Betsy, and Grossman, Jay (eds.), Breaking Bounds. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. A collection of essays by innovative scholars that sample newer critical approaches to Whitman, including cultural studies, queer studies, and feminism/gender studies.
Folsom, Ed, Walt Whitman's Native Representations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. A study of Whitman's relation to four areas of cultural interest: language, Native Americans, photography, and baseball.
Folsom, Ed (ed.), Whitman East and West: New Contexts for Reading Walt Whitman. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002. A collection of recent essays on Whitman with an emphasis on historical, political, and international connections, both Asian and European.
Fone, Byrne R. S., Masculine Landscapes: Walt Whitman and the Homoerotic Text. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992. Perhaps the most textually thorough book focusing on the treatment of same-sex love in Whitman's poetry.
Greenspan, Ezra, Walt Whitman and the American Reader. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Whitman's poetry in the context of book history and nineteenth-century literary culture, including such topics as publication trends and reading practices.
Grossman, Jay, Reconstituting the American Renaissance: Emerson, Whitman, and the Politics of Representation. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. A provocative reconsideration of the relationship of Whitman and Emerson in the context of constitutional issues in American political history and other topics (notably social class and attitudes toward the body).
Grünzweig, Walter, Constructing the German Walt Whitman. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995. An extensive study of Whitman's reception in Germany and in German literature.
Killingsworth, M. Jimmie, Walt Whitman and the Earth: A Study in Ecopoetics. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2004. A study of Whitman's nature writing in light of recent developments in ecocriticism and the history of environmentalism since Whitman's time.
Killingsworth, M. Jimmie, Whitman's Poetry of the Body: Sexuality, Politics, and the Text. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. A non-biographical treatment of hetero- and homoeroticism in Whitman's poetry in the context of the history of sexuality and sexual politics.
Klammer, Martin, Whitman, Slavery, and the Emergence of Leaves of Grass. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995. A treatment of the importance of slavery as a topic in the poetry and a context for the genesis of such key poems as “Song of Myself.”
Krieg, Joann, Walt Whitman and the Irish. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000. A study of Whitman's attitudes toward the Irish during the period of heavy immigration in nineteenth-century America as well as Whitman's reception in Ireland.
Krieg, Joann, A Whitman Chronology. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998. A highly useful sketch of Whitman's life and times, including key events in the historical context and publication dates; brief but substantive notes amount to a biography in miniature.
Kummings, Donald D. (ed.), A Companion to Walt Whitman. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. A collection of overviews of key themes and texts in Whitman's work by major scholars, particularly strong on cultural and political contexts.
Larson, Kerry, Whitman's Drama of Consensus. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1988. Close readings of Whitman's major poems deeply informed by ideology, language study, and literary theory, with an emphasis on the inconclusive interplay of diverse political perspectives.
LeMaster, J. R., and Kummings, Donald D. (eds.), Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 1998. An extensive and authoritative resource that provides entries on most of the individual writings and genres of Whitman's work, as well as key themes, historical topics, people, and places associated with Whitman.
Loving, Jerome M., Emerson, Whitman, and the American Muse. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Discusses Whitman in the context of Transcendentalism and the American Romantic movement.
Loving, Jerome M., Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Currently the standard critical biography of Whitman, with a particularly good treatment of the centrality of the Civil War in Whitman's life and works.
Mack, Stephen, The Pragmatic Whitman. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002. An important philosophical study that traces Whitman's lineage of democratic thought through the evolution of American pragmatism, particularly the secular and empirical tradition of John Dewey.
Maslan, Mark, Whitman Possessed: Poetry, Sexuality and Popular Authority. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. A critical and literary-historical examination of Whitman's poetics of inspiration, ideology, and desire through the trope of demonic possession.
Miller, Edwin Haviland, Walt Whitman's “Song of Myself”: A Mosaic of Interpretations. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989. A collection of various critical readings of Whitman's most famous poem, arranged line by line with additional commentary by the distinguished psychoanalytical critic and editor of Whitman's letters.
Moon, Michael, Disseminating Whitman: Revision and Corporeality in Leaves of Grass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. The body and sexuality in light of poststructuralist criticism and particularly Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Morris, Roy Jr., The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. A brief and highly readable narrative of Whitman's experiences in the Civil War with commentary on the effects of the war on his career as a poet.
Nathanson, Tenney, Whitman's Presence: Body, Voice, and Writing in Leaves of Grass. New York: New York University Press, 1992. Whitman's poetry as an example of the problem of presence as conceived by deconstructive criticism.
Perelman, Jim, Folsom, Ed, and Campion, Dan, Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song, 2nd edition. Stevens Point, WI: Holy Cow! Press, 1999. An extensive collection of modern poets and writers from around the world who comment on Whitman's influence and impact on their work.
Pollak, Vivian, The Erotic Whitman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. A primarily psychoanalytical approach to the anxiety of gender implicit in Whitman's poetry of the body.
Price, Kenneth M., Whitman and Tradition: The Poet in His Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990. Whitman in the context of Anglo-American literary history.
Price, Kenneth M., To Walt Whitman, America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Whitman iconography and influence in twentieth-century American culture, including social movements (involving race, sexuality, and gender, for example), literature, and film.
Reynolds, David S., Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography. New York: Knopf, 1995. The fullest treatment of Whitman's life and work in the context of nineteenth-century social issues, popular culture, politics, and art.
Reynolds, David S. (ed.), A Historical Guide to Walt Whitman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Includes a short biography as well as chapters on race, sexuality, democratic politics, and visual arts.
Selby, Nick, The Poetry of Walt Whitman. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. An overview of Whitman criticism (snippets of sample works in the history of the critical reception and commentary by Selby) with a special slant toward ideological criticism, including the later work of Karen Sanchez-Eppler and Jonathan Arac.
Thomas, M. Wynn, The Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. A study of Whitman's poetry keyed to the development of his political thinking and the ideology of artisanal republicanism.
Thomas, M. Wynn, Transatlantic Connections: Whitman US, Whitman UK. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2005. Further thoughts on the historical and political contexts of Whitman's work as well as studies of the poet's British reception.
Wardrop, Daneen, Word, Birth, and Culture: The Poetry of Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002. Homosexuality and the limits of linguistic experience in Whitman as one of three poets who made marginalized sexual choices in the context of nineteenth-century culture.
Warren, James Perrin, Walt Whitman's Language Experiment. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990. A study of the language and style of Whitman's writings in light of nineteenth- and twentieth-century theories of language.
Whitman, Walt, Complete Poetry and Collected Prose. New York: Library of America, 1982. The most complete and reliable single-volume collection of the poet's work (selected by Justin Kaplan); includes only minimal critical apparatus (no introduction or footnotes, for example).
Whitman, Walt, The Walt Whitman Archive, Kenneth, M. Price and Folsom, Ed (eds.). http://www.whitmanarchive.org/. An indispensable online resource with complete editions of Whitman's work as well as searchable bibliography, manuscript reproductions, and other scholarly aids.
