Specimen Days & Collect first appeared in 1882 but remains greatly underappreciated, despite giving us significant insight into Whitman?s life and old age. Composed in 1881 largely out of notes, sketches and essays written at various stages of the poet's life from the Civil War on, it is the closest thing to a conventional autobiography Whitman ever published. The largest and arguably the most important work of Whitman's old age, the book deserves attention as more than a source of information or for its moving descriptions of the poet's experiences in the Civil War.
