A "lost" novel by Walt Whitman, written in 1852. The great poet seems to be channeling Charles Dickens. -- Young Jack Engel is an orphan, raised by a loving grocer and his wife. He is apprenticed (none-too-enthusiastically on his part) to a rather shady Quaker lawyer named Covert, who, it turns out, may know more about Jack's origins than he is letting on. Jack meets an assortment of characters -- among them Covert's reformed-drunk clerk Wigglesworth (who plays a crucial role in uncovering Jack's background), the mysteriously beautiful Spanish dancer Inez, the stalwart friend Tom Peterson, and the lovely Martha, Covert's young ward (who seems strangely familiar to Jack). -- Virtue is rewarded and villainy punished (somewhat) by the end of book. Somewhat confusing in places and rather slight, but still enjoyable enough. One wonders what sort of novelist Whitman might have become, had not the muses of poetry beckoned more strongly... ( )

This ‘lost novel’ of Walt Whitman’s was published anonymously in serialized form in the New York Sunday Dispatch, so it’s a minor miracle it was recently discovered by Zachary Turpin. It’s a bit of a cross between a Charles Dickens coming of age tale and the American colloquialism and humor of Mark Twain, though critics would (probably rightfully) point out it’s a pretty thin version of both. And yet, how nice to read prose from Whitman, and see in it his humanity and optimism. The villain of the story is a lawyer, whose treatment of a carpenter mirrored what was done to Whitman’s own father. Chapter 19, when the protagonist wanders around the Trinity Church Cemetery, musing over life and death and noting the (real) tombstone inscription for Alexander Hamilton is fantastic, although it seemed a little out of place to the rest of the novel. Had Whitman become a novelist instead of a poet, I could see him fleshing all this out, and adding more of this kind of writing. As a story on its own, it’s pretty average, and includes the usual sorts of coincidences that one so often finds in 19th century fiction. As a window into Whitman in 1852, just three years before he would first publish his masterpiece, ‘Leaves of Grass’, it’s fascinating. ( )