Horace Traubel

Horace L. Traubel (1858–1919) was an American essayist, poet, magazine publisher, author, and Georgist. Traubel was closely associated with the Arts and Crafts movement in the United States and published a monthly literary magazine called The Conservator from 1890 until the time of his death. Although a poet of note in his own right, Traubel is best remembered as the literary executor and biographer of his friend, poet Walt Whitman, with whom he transcribed and compiled nine volumes of daily conversations, entitled With Walt Whitman in Camden.

Horace L. Traubel was born in Camden, New Jersey on December 19, 1858, the son of an ethnic Jewish father and an ethnic German mother. His father, Maurice Traubel, had been born in Germany before emigrating to the United States as a young man, where he settled in Philadelphia and learned the trade of lithography. His mother, the former Katherine Grunder, was met by Maurice after his arrival.

Horace was the fifth child of seven born to the couple. He left school at an early age, going to work at the age of 12 as a paperboy before working variously as a printers' assistant, lithographer, cub reporter at a newspaper, and bank clerk.

Early in his life he came to know Walt Whitman, whose volume of poetry Leaves of Grass was the subject of much hostile commentary among the literary critics of the day.

Traubel married in 1891 and had two children — a daughter who survived him and a son who died at the age of 5. The family moved from Philadelphia to neighboring Camden, New Jersey, but Traubel maintained an office across the Delaware River in the big city for years afterwards.

Traubel began to write himself in the late 1880s, specializing in literary criticism and poetry. In 1890 Traubel founded a literary journal, The Conservator, a monthly publication which he continued until the time of his death nearly three decades later. While the publication never attained a mass readership, it was well regarded for its quality and spirit by literary aficionados of the day. Traubel signed most his later work in the journal "T.", previously "H. T." and "H. L. T."

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