author
Horace Traubel
1858–1919
A close friend and devoted chronicler of Walt Whitman, he turned years of daily conversation into one of the richest records of an American writer’s life. He was also a poet, editor, and lively voice in progressive literary culture at the turn of the twentieth century.
1 Audiobook
The Glebe 1914/04 (Vol. 2, No. 1): Collects
by Horace Traubel
About the author
Born in Camden, New Jersey, Horace Traubel grew up in a working-class family and left school young, but he built a life in print and letters through journalism, publishing, and literary work. He became closely associated with the Arts and Crafts movement and edited The Conservator, a monthly magazine he published from 1890 until his death.
Traubel is best remembered for his deep friendship with Walt Whitman. In Whitman’s final years, he visited him constantly, took detailed notes on their conversations, and later shaped that material into the multi-volume With Walt Whitman in Camden, an extraordinary record of the poet’s last years and ideas.
He also wrote poetry and essays of his own, and his interests reached beyond literature into reform politics, including Georgism. Even so, his lasting place in American literary history comes from the warmth, patience, and detail with which he preserved Whitman’s voice for future readers.