This is the first sustained examination of Walt Whitman’s influence on British socialism. Harris combines a contextual historical study of Whitman’s reception with focused close readings of a variety of poems, books, articles, letters and speeches. She calls attention to Whitman’s own demand for the reader to ‘himself or herself construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay’, linking Whitman’s general comments about active reading to specific cases of his fin de siècle British socialist readership. These include the editorial aims behind the Whitman selections published by William Michael Rossetti, Ernest Rhys, and W. T. Stead and the ways that Whitman was interpreted and appropriated in a wide range of grassroots texts produced by individuals or groups who responded to Whitman and his poetry publicly in socialist circles. Harris makes full use of material from the C. F. Sixsmith and J. W. Wallace and the Bolton Whitman Fellowship collections at John Rylands, the Edward Carpenter collection in the Sheffield Archives, and the Archives of Swan Sonnenschein & Co. at the University of Reading. Much of this archive material – little of which is currently available in digital form – is discussed here in full for the first time. Accordingly, this study will appeal to those with interest in the archival history of nineteenth-century literary culture, as well as the connections to be made between literary and political culture of this era more generally.

In this thesis I exam me how fin de siècle British socialists engaged with Walt Whitman and his work. These were generally considered to be one and the same: the speaker in Leaves of Grass was understood to be Whitman, and Leaves of Grass was read as an extension of his personality. This underscores the appropriation of Whitman for the labour cause: his admirers not only used his words, but claimed the poet himself, often as a prophet as well as a poet. I argue that just as Leaves of Grass influenced the development of radical mystical and socio-political thinking, so were its reading and reception shaped by these ideological frameworks. I explore this relationship through articles, poems, books and speeches, many of which have received little or no critical attention, demonstrating how personal responses to Leaves o{Grass had an effect on the wider socialist community. Each chapter is concerned with a different socialist, or group of socialists, who read and responded to Whitman: first, Bolton's 'Eagle Street College', a reading group devoted to the poet; second, Edward Carpenter and his Whitmanesque poems in Towards Democracy; third, a selection of journalists who wrote in socialist publications; fourth, William Clarke and his book-length critique of Whitman. I finish with a comparative study of the use of 'Pioneers! 0 Pioneers!' by different figures within the socialist movement. My critical approach focuses specifically on the literary and political impact of the relationships between Whitman and his nineteenth-century 'disciples', complementing recent biographical scholarship in this field. The significance of Whitman to British socialism has long been recognised; however, though aspects of it have been critically discussed, this is the first extended study of the ways in which Whitman was responded to, interpreted, and used by British socialists.

This is the first sustained examination of Walt Whitman's influence on British socialism. Harris combines a contextual historical study of Whitman's reception with focused close readings of a variety of poems, books, articles, letters and speeches. She calls attention to Whitman's own demand for the reader to 'himself or herself construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay', linking Whitman's general comments about active reading to specific cases of his fin de siècle British socialist readership. These include the editorial aims behind the Whitman selections published by William Michael Rossetti, Ernest Rhys, and W. T. Stead and the ways that Whitman was interpreted and appropriated in a wide range of grassroots texts produced by individuals or groups who responded to Whitman and his poetry publicly in socialist circles. Harris makes full use of material from the C. F. Sixsmith and J. W. Wallace and the Bolton Whitman Fellowship collections at John Rylands, the Edward Carpenter collection in the Sheffield Archives, and the Archives of Swan Sonnenschein & Co. at the University of Reading. Much of this archive material - little of which is currently available in digital form - is discussed here in full for the first time. Accordingly, this study will appeal to those with interest in the archival history of nineteenth-century literary culture, as well as the connections to be made between literary and political culture of this era more generally.

This is the first sustained examination of Walt Whitman’s influence on British socialism. Harris combines a contextual historical study of Whitman’s reception with focused close readings of a variety of poems, books, articles, letters and speeches. She calls attention to Whitman’s own demand for the reader to ‘himself or herself construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay’, linking Whitman’s general comments about active reading to specific cases of his fin de siècle British socialist readership. These include the editorial aims behind the Whitman selections published by William Michael Rossetti, Ernest Rhys, and W. T. Stead and the ways that Whitman was interpreted and appropriated in a wide range of grassroots texts produced by individuals or groups who responded to Whitman and his poetry publicly in socialist circles. Harris makes full use of material from the C. F. Sixsmith and J. W. Wallace and the Bolton Whitman Fellowship collections at John Rylands, the Edward Carpenter collection in the Sheffield Archives, and the Archives of Swan Sonnenschein & Co. at the University of Reading. Much of this archive material – little of which is currently available in digital form – is discussed here in full for the first time. Accordingly, this study will appeal to those with interest in the archival history of nineteenth-century literary culture, as well as the connections to be made between literary and political culture of this era more generally.

In a dynamic interplay with the discourses of socialism, anarchism, humanism, and freethought in early twentieth century America, Walt Whitman's texts helped to shape those forces while the texts themselves were re-shaped in the discourse. Chapter 1 discusses the process by which the British socialists appropriated Whitman's poetry as their own. Chapter 2 traces the influence of Whitman's literary executor, Horace Traubel, who shaped Whitman's legacy as an American socialist. Chapter 3 explores how leaders of the radical left adapted Whitman's memes to their own purposes, discussing Robert Ingersoll's freethinker memes, Clarence Darrow's humanist memes, Emma Goldman's anarchist memes, and Eugene V. Debs' Christian socialist memes. Chapter 4 offers an extensive analysis of Whitman's memes in the rhetoric and propaganda of the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies). Using cultural criticism and reader response theory, the thesis argues for a new reading of Whitman's poetry that reflects its appeal to the radical left.