For several years just before and after 1860, Walt Whitman frequented Pfaff's beer cellar in downtown Manhattan. The basement bar was at the centre of mid-nineteenth-century American bohemian activity and was patronized by writers, artists, musicians, actors, intellectuals, and radicals. In telling the story of these intersecting social and professional links that converged at Pfaff's, the essays in this volume demonstrate just how much we can learn about Whitman and his work by viewing him within the context of American bohemia.