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Houston Academic Finds Uncredited Novel Written By Walt Whitman

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- American poet and novelist Walt Whitman - who died in Camden, New Jersey in 1892 - is believed to be the anonymous author of a novel published as a newspaper series in the 1850's - before his famous work, "Leaves of Grass."

Zachary Turpin is getting a reputation as an academic detective with a specialty in sleuthing archives in search of uncredited writings of Walt Whitman.

The 33-year-old Turpin, an Austin, Texas native who is completing doctoral studies at the University of Houston, is credited with finding an 1852 work, "Life and Adventures of Jack Engle."

He says the story never was printed beyond the pages of Manhattan's "Sunday Dispatch."

But Turpin says he found clues in a Whitman notebook digitized in an academic archive that pointed to the plot and some character names in the "Jack Engle" story.

"Whitman kept many of his manuscripts in notebooks and we have those digitized today and what you can see if you go look at those is that Whitman probably wrote other novels in addition to this one. There's at least one more than we know of," Turpin said. "So, it's a fascinating time to be a reader of Whitman and a lover of American literature."

"Sort of pulling back the curtain on Whitman's literary lab in the mid-1850's and seeing him hard at work on both novels and poetry, poetry that will become what we know as 'Leaves of Grass,' but also being reminded that there may be more works like this out there," Turpin added.

A year ago, Turpin found another Whitman work on fitness and healthy living which was published in 1858 under a pseudonym.

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