author
Horace Traubel
1858–1919
A close friend, literary executor, and tireless champion of Walt Whitman, this American writer helped preserve one of the most vivid firsthand records of the poet’s later years. He also edited the long-running magazine The Conservator and became a distinctive voice in progressive literary and social thought.
1 Audiobook
The Glebe 1914/04 (Vol. 2, No. 1): Collects
by Horace Traubel
About the author
Born in Camden, New Jersey, in 1858, Horace Traubel was an American essayist, poet, editor, and publisher. He is best remembered for his deep friendship with Walt Whitman and for recording Whitman’s conversations in extraordinary detail, creating a major resource for readers and scholars interested in the poet’s life and work.
Traubel was also active in the broader literary and reform culture of his time. He published The Conservator from 1890 until his death, and his work connected him with the Arts and Crafts movement as well as Georgist social ideas. His writing mixed literature, politics, and human sympathy in a way that made him an influential figure among progressive readers of the early twentieth century.
He died in 1919, but his reputation has lasted through the many volumes of With Walt Whitman in Camden and through the role he played in keeping Whitman’s legacy alive. For audiobook listeners, he stands out not only as a writer in his own right, but as an attentive listener whose pages preserve the living voice of another great American author.