Editing Walt Whitman (section)

== Philadelphia Connections ==

Philadelphia's intellectual and artistic community embraced Whitman during his Camden years in ways that earlier American reception had not achieved. The painter Thomas Eakins, whose realism Whitman appreciated, created portraits that remain among the most significant visual representations of the poet. Their friendship, built on mutual appreciation of honesty in art, connected Whitman to Philadelphia's artistic community in ways that shaped how subsequent generations would visualize him. The Eakins portrait at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts preserves this Philadelphia-Whitman connection.<ref name="reynolds"/>

His Philadelphia publishers, including David McKay, produced editions of "Leaves of Grass" and other works that kept his writing available while his reputation evolved from scandalous to celebrated. The city's printing industry, one of America's largest, provided the production capability that his continuous revisions required. His relationships with Philadelphia journalists and writers extended his intellectual community beyond Camden's more limited circles.<ref name="loving"/>

His celebrations of the Delaware River and of Camden-Philadelphia geography in "Specimen Days" and in late poems demonstrated that the region had become home rather than merely residence. The ferry crossings, the evening light on the water, and the city views from Camden shores all entered his verse, the Philadelphia region providing imagery that his later work incorporated. His Long Island and Brooklyn origins did not prevent the Philadelphia region from claiming the poet whose final decades it witnessed.<ref name="reynolds"/>