Franklin Evans, or The InebriateNot many people know that Walt Whitmanarguably the preeminent American poet of the nineteenth centurybegan his literary career as a novelist. Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate: A Tale of the Times was his first and only novel. Published in 1842, during a period of widespread temperance activity, it became Whitmans most popular work during his lifetime, selling some twenty thousand copies. The novel tells the rags to riches story of Franklin Evans, an