Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.
Readers are wise to approach literary biography with some trepidation.
We read literary biography, however, to help elucidate the works of great writers and maybe even learn a little about how they wrote so darn well. When the writer in question has been dead a long time, the work remains, like domes from antiquity, without the scaffolding which made the work possible. The dome often seems more understandable to us, though, when we understand the processes involved in making it. These currents fed into Whitman's poetry. Reynolds also looks at prostitution in New York City during the 1850's, when five to ten percent of women were prostitutes.