Bohemia in America, 1858-1920 explores the construction and emergence of "Bohemia" in American literature and culture. Simultaneously a literary trope, a cultural nexus, and a socio-economic landscape, la vie boheme traveled to the United States from the Parisian Latin Quarter in the 1850s. At first the province of small artistic coteries, Bohemia soon inspired a popular vogue, embodied in restaurants, clubs, neighborhoods, novels, poems, and dramatic performances across the country. Levin's study follows la vie boheme from its earliest expressions in the U.S. until its...

Provides readings, interpretations, and explorations of Whitman in the many contexts through which he charted his life and wrote his texts.