Life and Adventures of Jack Engle

"Life and Adventures of Jack Engle: An Auto-Biography" can be considered as "The lost book of Walt Whitman"


It is a novel discovered in the year 2017 and originally published by deliveries in a newspaper.


The finding of this new and brief novel published by installments in 1852 in The Sunday Dispach extends our knowledge of its author.

 It would be absurd to say that it is a literary jewel of the first order, but it would be a gross negligence to deny its importance as a lyrical, introspective and clarifying document.

From the first page, the willingness to imitate Dickens is appreciated, narrating the adventures and misadventures of a young apprentice lawyer who ignores essential events of his past.


A novel dedicated to the New York press reader of the mid-nineteenth century but in which already appear, especially in the last chapters, the great themes of the author of Leaves of Grass.


Is it worth reading "Life and Adventures of Jack Engle: An Auto-Biography"?

No doubt, but because of its plot -something rudimentary and hasty-, but because of the vibrant humanity of Walt Whitman, who shines on every page.