Walt Whitman

The text of this facsimile of the first edition of Leaves of Grass, published by Whitman in Brooklyn in 1855, is reproduced from a copy in the Library of Yale University. The eight pages of first comments and reviews, added to later copies of the first edition by Whitman and containing a review in The American Phrenological Journal specifically attributed to the poet himself, are from a copy in the collection of The Pierpont Morgan Library. The printed...

Whitman employs the cadence of simple, even idiomatic speech to "sing" national identity. Throughout his prolific career, Whitman continually revised and expanded Leaves of Grass, which went through nine editions. This volume include the first edition, the final, authorized "Death-Bed" edition, and selections of the best poems from preceding editions and other sources. Whitman employs the cadence of simple, even idiomatic speech to "sing" national...

Presents a brief biography of poet Walt Whitman, including excerpts of his poems, like "Song of Myself."

Walt Whitman experienced the agonies of the Civil War firsthand as a volunteer in Washington's military hospitals. This superb selection of poems, letters, and prose from that era includes "O Captain! My Captain!" "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," "Adieu to a Soldier," and many other moving works.

"This volume reprints the whole of the initial, 1855 version of Leaves of grass (with titles and section numbers, as they would appear in later editions, supplied in brackets). Added, too, are a handful of poems from across the length of Whitman's career--these taken from the 1891-92 "Deathbed edition," though arranged chronologically--and selected prose pieces"--Page xiii.

Walt Whitman worked as a nurse in an army hospital during the Civil War and published Drum-Taps, his war poems, as the war was coming to an end. Later, the book came out in an expanded form, including "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," Whitman's passionate elegy for Lincoln. The most moving and enduring poetry to emerge from America's most tragic conflict, Drum-Taps also helped to create a new, modern poetry of war, a poetry not just of patriotic...