University of Houston Doctoral Candidate Finds Whitman Novel

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/University-of-Houston-Doctoral-Candidate-Finds-Whitman-Novel-414420973.html#ixzz4ZNFef5nW ^

[nickcarraway]

Zachary Turpin was propped up in bed with his laptop in May, his wife and newborn son sleeping beside him, when he made a discovery that stands to rock the literary world.

There on his screen, he saw a small ad in an 1852 newspaper. The ad promised "A Rich Revelation:" A six-installment piece of fiction called "Life and Adventures of Jack Engle" was coming soon to the Sunday Dispatch, a three-penny weekly published in Manhattan.

The Houston Chronicle reports the short novel, like the newspaper that published it, was all but lost to the ages. But the author, Turpin believed, was Walt Whitman, one of America's best-known and most beloved poets.

[Terry L Smith]

Dear Joe,

‘Dangerous Dan McGrew’ always appealed to me.

Living in Oregon with a Douglas Fir tree in the backyard, knowing that the taproot is as far down as the tree is tall, (as above, so below) or a patch of scrub pine trees in the backyard of base housing on Cape Cod, can lead to an acceptance of trees.

But trees can never, at any time of any day, without the aid of Nature, be as dangerous as ‘Dangerous Dan McGrew’.