Thomas Biggs Harned was the literary executor for the Walt Whitman estate. He was born and died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. One of Whitman's three literary executors, Thomas Biggs Harned was a prosperous Philadelphia lawyer. His twenty-year acquaintance with Whitman involved nearly daily contact during the poet's final years. Harned funded the construction of Whitman's mausoleum and co-arranged his funeral, at which he participated as speaker and pallbearer. Later, Harned wrote the introduction to the definitive ten-volume Camden Edition of Whitman's works (1902). Some thought Harned's decision to publish The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman (1918) in dubious taste.