A lost Walt Whitman novella opens up a whole new literary period in the poet's life

It's a rare feeling to be able to look at an old artifact and say to yourself, "I'm the only person in the world who knows about something this monumental." But Zachary Turpin, a grad student at the University of Houston, was able to say that recently. 

Earlier this year, Turpin discovered a novella by American poet Walt Whitman entitled Life and Adventures of Jack Engle: An Auto-Biography; In Which the Reader Will Find Some Familiar Characters. Whitman, as Turpin notes, was not only a poet. In fact, he often tried his hand at different modes of writing including essays, operas, plays and more. "With this huge paper trail, it seemed fairly likely that there's more out there," Turpin adds. 

And while this discovery alone is a great feat, Turpin believes there are even more Whitman works out there waiting to be found. He concludes: "This book essentially opens up a whole new potential literary period in Whitman's life; there's every indication that he wrote more novels like this." 

— Produced by Daemon Fairless