3 Review(s)

The largest and greatest edition of Walt Whitman's writings has ever been released. It contains all of his poetry as well as what he thought to be all of his prose. The initial edition of Leaves of Grass is also the only collection to have it in exactly the same format as when it first debuted in 1855. As it developed, it received praise from Emerson, Thoreau, Rosetti, and others, but it was also plagued by accusations of obscenity for poems like "A Woman Waits for Me," as with the sixth edition in 1881–1882 Whitman's prose is as exceptional. Memories of nineteenth-century New York City that will intrigue readers in the twenty-first century can be found in Specimen Days and Collect (1882), together with notes on the Civil War.