Leaves of Grass: The Deathbed Edition

walt whitman

Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass took various forms during the poet's lifetime. The 1855 first edition was a thin pamphlet of 12 poems; the great final edition encompassed more than 300. It is the 1892 edition of Leaves of Grass--commonly called "the Deathbed Edition" that remains the bard's definitive version of what is indisputably an American classic. In Leaves of Grass , Whitman abandoned traditional Victorian poetic forms and language, handled decidedly unconventional subjects and themes, and evoked so personal a tone and so candid a voice that the book offended the few people who read it in the first edition. Only Ralph Waldo Emerson hailed Whitman "at the beginning of a great career." Today Whitman is revered for his accomplishment, and many of his poems are admired as among America's the exquisite personal meditation of Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking ; the celebration of the human body and spirit in Song of Myself ; the paeans to companionship of the Calamus poems; and the landmark elegy for Abraham Lincoln, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd . Throughout Leaves of Grass we glimpse the sublime beauty of the natural world and feel Whitman's loving embrace of the common man.

Genres poetryclassicsfictionliteratureamerican19th centuryphilosophyclassic literatureschoolthe united states of america

427 pages, Paperback

First published July 4,1855

Literary awards

premi crítica serra dor de traducció,

Places

new york city new york, washington d.c.,

This edition

Format: 427 pages, Paperback
Published: March 1, 1992 by Book-of-the-Month Club
ISBN: 9780965231268
ASIN: 0965231267
Language: English

About the author

walt whitman

Walter Whitman Jr. was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature. Whitman incorporated both transcendentalism and realism in his writings and is often called the father of free verse. His work was controversial in his time, particularly his 1855 poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described by some as obscene for its overt sensuality.
Whitman was born in Huntington on Long Island, and lived in Brooklyn as a child and through much of his career. At the age of 11, he left formal schooling to go to work. He worked as a journalist, a teacher, and a government clerk. Whitman's major poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, was financed with his own money and became well known. The work was an attempt to reach out to the common person with an American epic. Whitman continued expanding and revising Leaves of Grass until his death in 1892.
During the American Civil War, he went to Washington, D.C., and worked in hospitals caring for the wounded. His poetry often focused on both loss and healing. On the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman greatly admired, he authored two poems, "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", and gave a series of lectures on Lincoln. After suffering a stroke towards the end of his life, Whitman moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. When he died at the age of 72, his funeral was a public event.
Whitman's influence on poetry remains strong. Art historian Mary Berenson wrote, "You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do without him." Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman "America's poet... He is America."