num_pages: 368
description: In the shadow of the Civil War a circle of radicals in a rowdy saloon changed American society and helped set Walt Whitman on the path to poetic immortality.Rebel Souls is the first book ever written about the colorful group of artists regulars at Pfaffs Saloon in Manhattanrightly considered Americas original Bohemians. Besides a young Whitman the circle included actor Edwin Booth; trailblazing standup comic Artemus Ward; psychedelic drug pioneer and author Fitz Hugh Ludlow; and brazen performer Adah Menken famous for her Naked Lady routine. Central to their times the artists managed to forge connections with Ralph Waldo Emerson Mark Twain and even Abraham Lincoln. This vibrant tale packed with original research offers the pleasures of a great group biography like The Banquet Years or The Metaphysical Club. Justin Martin shows how this first bohemian cultureimported from Paris to a dingy Broadway saloonseeded and nurtured an American tradition of rebel art that thrives to this day.
language: English
title: Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians
publisher: Da Capo Press