WHITMAN, Walt. Leaves of Grass. Including Sands at Seventy … 1st Annex, Good-Bye my Fancy … 2nd Annex, A Backward Glance o'er Travel'd Roads, and Portrait from Life. Philadelphia, David McKay, 1891-2.
8vo. Original green cloth, spine lettered in gilt, binding C ; pp. 438, facsimile of the author's signature on title, stipple-engraved uncaptioned portrait facing p. 29, retaining tissue guard; spine bumped to head and foot, new front free endpaper, short closed tear to margin of title page not affecting text, otherwise very good.
Ninth, 'deathbed edition', with Whitman's final amendments and additions. It is argued that this is not a separate edition at all but an issue, the 1881 edition being the final arrangement of the 293 poems that form Leaves of Grass, with the annexes added in this iteration being supplementary to the larger work. In any case, there are some minor textual differences in this edition and it represents Whitman's final conception of his life's work: "As I now consider it finished as I propose & laid out—even its deficiencies are provided for, or plainly hinted at—to me its best points are an unmistakable atmosphere…" (Correspondence 5:271). It is certainly very different from the first edition, which contained only twelve poems.
Despite the controversy and outrage that greeted Whitman's work upon its first publication - one reviewer called it a "mass of stupid filth" (The Criterion, 10 November 1855) - it has come to be considered a central work of American poetry, radical in form, epic in its treatment of democracy, nature and love, and courageous in its sexual frankness.
BAL 21441.
SKU: 2124225