The Thomas Biggs Harned Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman spans the period 1842-1937, with most of the items dated from 1855 to 1892. The collection consists of Whitman's correspondence, poetry and prose manuscripts, notes and notebooks, proofs and offprints, printed matter, and miscellaneous supplementary items. A detailed description of the Harned Collection has been published in the Library of Congress publication Walt Whitman: a Catalog (1955), which contains an introductory essay on significant Whitman collectors and their collections and an annotated bibliographic listing of Whitman items then located among the collections of various divisions within the Library. This catalog should be used in conjunction with the present register.

The Container List in this register reflects the arrangement of the collection as outlined in the catalog, but because the material was once mounted in bound volumes, the item arrangement described in this list does not correspond identically to that in the catalog. In order to coordinate the two guides, the sequence of the series in the register is set up to mirror as closely as possible the arrangement in the catalog. Cross references are employed wherever necessary to pull together items separated physically by series placement, as in the series Lincoln Material and Whitman Broadsides. Identification numbers from the catalog are used in the register and placed within parentheses next to their corresponding items.

Walt Whitman's papers were divided among his three literary executors, Richard M. Bucke, Thomas Biggs Harned, and Horace L. Traubel. Of these, only Harned's collection remains largely intact, the integrity of the other collections having been lost through dispersal. Whitman's personal habits were such that he wrote and collected his notes in a casual and unsystematic manner, entrusting his thoughts to scraps of paper, be it the back of a used envelope or the verso of a letter. His notebooks contain an equal number of random jottings, some no more than bits and pieces of paper sewn together to form a small notebook. These notes and notebooks include names and addresses, trial titles, trial lines of poetry and prose pieces, diary and hospital notes, pencil sketches and drawings, drafts of poems and essays, autobiographical and personal notes, printing and publishing notes, and miscellaneous notes on a wide range of subjects such as history, geography, politics, and ethnology.

Poems and prose writings in the Manuscripts series vary in form from tentative outlines to final drafts. This material often shows the extensive revision characteristic of Whitman's composition. Related notes and notebook entries add details helpful for textual analysis of the poems. Whitman's practice of drafting letters, notes, and literary works on the back of incoming letters necessitates the identification of verso items in order to provide full documentation. References to verso entries are noted in the published catalog and reflected through cross-reference citations in the register.

James R. Osgood printed the Boston edition of Leaves of Grass (1881-1882), which was withdrawn from publication after being censored by local authorities. Correspondence between Osgood and Whitman about this edition is contained in the collection, as are letters exchanged with T. W. Rolleston concerning German and Russian translations. Other correspondents include Anne Burrows Gilchrist, Thomas Biggs Harned, William Sloane Kennedy, James M. Scovel, J. M. Stoddart, and Benjamin Holt Ticknor.

Whitman had been greatly moved by Abraham Lincoln, who symbolized for him the best in the American national character and who inspired some of his greatest poetry. He lectured extensively on Lincoln, and in a series of lectures given between 1879 and 1890, he recalled details of Lincoln's life and death and sketched an intimate profile based on personal reminiscence. The Lincoln Material series contains a thematic grouping of various types of manuscripts and printed matter concerning these lectures and related topics.

The Proofs and Offprints series includes copies of Whitman's prose and poetry. Whitman often revised his writings after having them set in type, and several of the proofs in this series contain either corrections of the text or notations for the printer.

In 1942, a group of Whitman notebooks from the Harned collection, along with other national treasures, were evacuated from Washington, D.C., for safekeeping during World War II. Upon the return of the material from storage in 1944, it was discovered that ten Whitman notebooks and a cardboard butterfly were missing. In 1995, the Library regained custody of four of these notebooks and the butterfly, but six notebooks remain unaccounted for.

The recovered items relate to Whitman's early career as a journalist and poet and include notes on perception and the senses, names and addresses, diary notes, drafts of Civil War poems, and observations made in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War. Whitman also used the notebooks to record the public's reaction to and acceptance of his poetry. The earliest notebook in the collection, written between 1847 and 1854, was among the four recovered and contains drafts of one of Whitman's most famous poems, "Song of Myself." Other notebooks contain notes Whitman made while working as a nurse in Civil War hospitals in Washington, 1862-1864. The cardboard butterfly is thought to be the same Whitman wired on his finger in a photograph that was published as the frontispiece for the 1889 birthday edition of Leaves of Grass .

Although photocopies of parts of the recovered items remain in the collection, cross references refer only to the original documents. Digital images of these documents are accessible on the Internet at the Library's World Wide Web site.