Walt Whitman

In 1855, an unknown but wildly ambitious young poet self-published the first edition of Leaves of Grass, consisting of twelve untitled poems and an explanatory preface. Walt Whitman spent the rest of his life engaged in expanding and revising this work, through six editions and nearly four decades, establishing Leaves of Grass as one of the central works in the history of world poetry. This edition reproduces the magnificent "death-bed edition," published...

One of the Greatest Poems in American Literature Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was considered by many to be one of the most important American poets of all time. He had a profound influence on all those who came after him. "Song of Myself", a portion of Whitman's monumental poetry collection "Leaves of Grass", is one of his most beloved poems. It was through this moving piece that Whitman first made himself known to the world. One of the most acclaimed...

In his unconventional verse, Walt Whitman spoke in a powerful, sensual, oratorical, and inspiring voice. His most famous work, Leaves of Grass, was a long-term project that the poet compared to the building of a cathedral or the slow growth of a tree. During his lifetime, from 1819 to 1892, it went through nine editions. Today it is regarded as a landmark of American literature. This volume contains 24 poems from Leaves of Grass, offering a generous...

A collection of fifty-three poems and selections from poems focusing on the people and places encountered by the nineteenth-century American writer from his mid-thirties through his early seventies.

Published in 1871, Democratic Vistas is perhaps Walt Whitman's most important prose work. Disenchanted with the pervasive corruption during the period of Reconstruction, he examines democracy and its problems during this era, arguing for a balance between individualism and democracy, and ultimately expressing his belief in the triumph of the democratic ideal.

"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"--P. xiii.