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  "path": "/2026/05/30/traversal-phrenology-whitman/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-30T21:01:34.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.themarginalian.org",
  "tags": [
    "culture",
    "science",
    "books",
    "language",
    "LGBT",
    "love",
    "poetry",
    "Stephen Jay Gould",
    "Traversal",
    "Walt Whitman",
    "read article"
  ],
  "textContent": "This essay is adapted from Traversal and continues the story of the making of Leaves of Grass. With Leaves of Grass already printed — by a Brooklyn friend, at the poet’s own expense — Whitman had only to find a willing distributor who would root this uncommon book into the common soil of popular literature. He had the boldly entrepreneurial idea of approaching Fowler & Wells — New York’s preeminent publisher of phrenological and physiological books, books Whitman had reviewed while working as a journalist at The Brooklyn Daily Eagle and sold at his home bookstore. Like astrology, like racism,… read article",
  "title": "How Phrenology Queered Language: Walt Whitman and the Evolving Lexicon of Love"
}