The 19th century witnessed dramatic growth in the American memoir. To tell one’s story reflects the individualism that is so important to the American idea. Frederick Douglass told his story of freedom and enlightenment; Henry David Thoreau protested civilization and charted a new inner landscape; Ralph Waldo Emerson became the great American philosopher. Walt Whitman sings of a self that is not singular and narrow, but of a self that “contains multitudes.” In this masterpiece, Whitman imagines the lives of others; he inhabits them and ultimately loves them.
