Book Review: Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians by Justin Martin

Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians by Justin Martin

Published by: Da Capo Press

Published on: September 2, 2014

Page Count: 368

Genre: Biography

My Reading Format: ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley

Available Formats: Hardcover, Kindle, Audible

My Review:

Pfaff's Saloon in Manhattan was for years where an eclectic but now well-known group of artists and writers gathered to share their ideas with each other. At the center of this group was young poet Walt Whitman. Those who drifted in an out of this group over the next years are others who were making names for themselves: actors Edwin Booth and his brother John Wilkes Booth, comedian Artemus Ward, drug experimenter Fitz Hugh Ludlow and a scandalous actress named Adah Menken. The group was widely traveled but kept Pfaff's Saloon as a home base, gathering nearly every evening at the same table in the bar.

I read this book shortly before teaching Whitman's poetry to my American literature* class and found Martin's book to be meticulously researched and absolutely fascinating. This book featuring this quirky cast of characters with Whitman at the center really brings the bohemian group of American romantic artists to life. As the book progresses, Martin reveals, layer by layer, the connections this group formed with other notable people of the time. In particular, Martin tells of the very short degree of separation between Whitman and the assassination of the man he admired perhaps more than anyone else:  President Abraham Lincoln (and, this connection isn't through John Wilkes Booth but someone else).

Martin's book is no stuffy biography but a book that reads more like a novel and painting a picture in my head of the smoky basement bar and all the debauchery that must have ensued night after night.
It's a fascinating look into a world I knew next to nothing about before reading Rebel Souls, and I'm glad I did.

Four out of five stars

If you liked this book, you’ll like Mrs. Poe by Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Lincoln: A Life by Catherine Clinton, John Wilkes Booth: Beyond the Grave by W. C. Jameson, and any of Walt Whitman's poetry.

**Here's what else I included in my syllabus for American literature.

John Wilkes Booth: Beyond the Grave by W. C. Jameson - See more at: http://betsyrm.blogspot.com/2013/07/book-review-john-wilkes-booth-beyond.html#sthash.N9bf4MMV.dpuf

John Wilkes Booth: Beyond the Grave by W. C. Jameson - See more at: http://betsyrm.blogspot.com/2013/07/book-review-john-wilkes-booth-beyond.html#sthash.N9bf4MMV.dpuf