WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)

Walt Whitman - a remarkable and individual poet, prose writer, journalist, philosopher, outspoken herald of American democracy, and supreme egoist - is one of America's towering literary figures, and his Leaves of Grass is one of the most celebrated and, along with Faulkner's The Marble Faun, most sought-after of American first editions. This slim volume, containing twelve poems and a long prose preface, was certainly Whitman's personal favorite, and he continued to revise and enlarge it through eleven successive editions to the time of his death (by which time 283 poems had been added). The poems are imbues with a fiercely independent American spirit that was so much a part of Whitman's character.

The copy exhibited is a later issue of the first edition. Since copies of the first edition were bound up as required, they show all kind of subtle variants in text and binding between the earliest and latest issues. This copy is distinguished as a later issue by its eight preliminary pages of advertisements or reviews, and by its green cloth binding, blind stamped on its back cover, with the title in gold on the front cover and spine.