Walt Whitman: Poet of prizefighters.

Abstract

This article comprehensively examines Walt Whitman’s writings on nineteenth-century bare-knuckle prizefighting and its training regimens. Until recently, the only sport addressed in relation to Whitman has been baseball; however, the recent discovery of the poet’s self-help manifesto, “Manly Health and Training,” greatly expands his known writing on boxing and forces a reconsideration of Whitman in the context of sports literature in general and early American prizefighting in particular. For a brief period prior to the Civil War, culminating in 1858, Whitman expressed sustained interest in pugilism. He praises boxers’ character and physique, reviews a recent bout heralded as America’s first championship fight, recommends boxing training broadly to Americans, and argues for the sport’s legalization—making Whitman, as opposed to Jack London, the first American author of note to significantly address America’s most widely discussed spectator sport during the nineteenth century.