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60 free Walt Whitman trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Walt Whitman trivia quiz covers the printer's devil from Long Island who became the father of free verse. It starts with his life: nine children and a Quaker mother, leaving school at 11, the newspapers he founded and edited, a temperance novel he later disowned, and the twelve poems he set in type himself in 1855 with a portrait instead of a name on the cover. Then it follows Leaves of Grass through Emerson's letter, the obscenity row in Boston and the Deathbed Edition. The second half covers the Civil War hospitals, the brother he went to find at Fredericksburg, the clerkship he lost to a scandalised Interior Secretary, the two great Lincoln elegies, Peter Doyle, the stroke that took him to Camden, the Mickle Street house, Oscar Wilde's visit, the house-shaped tomb, and the afterlife in Dead Poets Society, on a Delaware River bridge and on a Long Island shopping mall. About a third of the questions are easy; the rest are for people who know their Calamus from their Children of Adam. Our American poets and Emily Dickinson quizzes make good companions. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Whitman, Leaves of Grass and his poems, and each explanation adds one more detail.
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Q 01Whitman is often called the father of which poetic form?
Free verse
His work blended transcendentalism and realism and was condemned by some as obscene.
Q 02Where was Walt Whitman born in 1819?
West Hills, Long Island
He was the second of nine children of Quaker parents and moved to Brooklyn at four.
Q 03Why was he nicknamed 'Walt' from birth?
To tell him apart from his father, Walter
His mother was of Dutch descent and his father of English descent.
Q 04At what age did Whitman leave school to go to work?
11
He became an office boy and then a printer's devil for a Long Island weekly.
Q 05Which newspaper did Whitman found himself in Huntington after giving up teaching?
The Long-Islander
He later edited the Aurora in 1842 and the Brooklyn Eagle from 1846 to 1848.
Q 06Which newspaper did Whitman edit from 1846 to 1848?
The Brooklyn Eagle
He worked for many papers for short spells over the years.
Q 07What kind of book was Whitman's Franklin Evans; or The Inebriate (1842)?
A temperance novel
Whitman was a vocal supporter of temperance in his youth and rarely drank.
Q 08On what date was the first edition of Leaves of Grass self-published?
July 4, 1855
It was printed in Brooklyn by two Scottish immigrants, James and Andrew Rome.
Q 09How many poems were in the first edition of Leaves of Grass?
Twelve
The last edition held over 400; the first ran to only 95 pages.
Q 10How many copies of the first Leaves of Grass were printed?
795
Instead of the author's name, the cover carried an engraving of Whitman in work clothes and a jaunty hat.
Q 11The title of Whitman's great collection is a pun. What did publishers call works of minor value?
Grass
'Leaves' was another name for the pages they were printed on.
Q 12Which writer's five-page letter of praise did Whitman quote in gold on his second edition?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The line was 'I greet you at the beginning of a great career'.
Q 13Which 1844 Emerson essay, calling for a distinctly American bard, helped inspire Leaves of Grass?
The Poet
Emerson wanted someone to write about the young country's virtues and vices.
Q 21What nickname did William O'Connor's 1866 defence of Whitman give him?
The Good Gray Poet
O'Connor wrote it after Whitman's firing from the Interior Department.
Q 22'O Captain! My Captain!' is an extended metaphor about the death of whom?
Abraham Lincoln
It was written in the summer of 1865, months after the assassination.
Q 23How is 'O Captain! My Captain!' unusual among Whitman's poems?
It rhymes and has a regular scheme
Its AABBCDED scheme made it his most popular poem in his lifetime, though later critics called it conventional.
Q 14What title was later given to the first, untitled poem of the 1855 edition, which ran to 1,336 lines?
Song of Myself
The twelve poems together ran to 2,315 lines.
Q 15Complete Whitman's famous line: 'Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I...'
contain multitudes
It comes in section 51 of the poem.
Q 16Which brother's name in a Fredericksburg casualty list sent Whitman rushing to the front in 1862?
George
George served in the 51st New York Infantry and was later captured by the Confederates.
Q 17What did Whitman do in Washington during the Civil War besides clerking?
Volunteered as a hospital nurse
His friend Charley Eldridge got him part-time work in the army paymaster's office.
Q 18Whitman's 1865 collection of Civil War poems was called what?
Drum-Taps
He published it on the day he was promoted to a slightly higher clerkship.
Q 19Which Interior Secretary dismissed Whitman from his clerkship in 1865?
James Harlan
His friend William O'Connor hit back with a pamphlet biography called The Good Gray Poet.
Q 20In which office of the Interior Department did Whitman work as a clerk before his dismissal?
Indian Affairs
He was then transferred to the Attorney General's office.
Q 24In which periodical was 'O Captain! My Captain!' first published on 4 November 1865?
The Saturday Press
It then appeared in Sequel to Drum-Taps.
Q 25What three symbols form the 'trinity' of Whitman's 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd'?
Lilac, star and bird
The bird is a hermit thrush and the drooping western star is Venus; the 206-line poem never names Lincoln.
Q 26Which bird sings in 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd'?
A hermit thrush
The poem follows the pastoral elegy's movement from grief toward acceptance of death.
Q 27Peter Doyle, often called the love of Whitman's life, had witnessed which event?
Lincoln's assassination at Ford's Theatre
A former Confederate soldier, he worked as a Washington streetcar conductor when Whitman met him around 1866.
Q 28What was Peter Doyle's job when he and Whitman met around 1866?
Bus conductor
Their joint photograph has been described as modelled on a marriage portrait.
Q 29What happened to Whitman in early 1873 that led him to move to Camden, New Jersey?
A paralytic stroke
He moved into the home of his brother George, an engineer, at 431 Stevens Street.
Q 30Where in Camden did Whitman buy the only house he ever owned, in 1884?
Mickle Street
He paid $1,750, partly with a loan from publisher George Childs.