Name: Leaves of Grass: [Exact Facsimile of the 1855 First Edition]
Price: 14.10 EUR
Availability: InStock
Author: Whitman, Walt
ISBN: 9781684220588

portada Leaves of Grass: [Exact Facsimile of the 1855 First Edition]

Leaves of Grass: [Exact Facsimile of the 1855 First Edition]

Type

Physical Book

Author

Walt Whitman

Publisher

Martino Fine Books

Language

English

Pages

100

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

24.6 x 18.9 x 0.5 cm

Weight

0.20 kg.

ISBN13

9781684220588

Synopsis "Leaves of Grass: [Exact Facsimile of the 1855 First Edition]"

2017 Reprint of 1855 First Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "Leaves of Grass" was highly controversial during its time for its explicit sexual imagery, and Whitman was subject to derision by many contemporary critics. Over time, the collection has infiltrated popular culture and been recognized as one of the central works of American poetry. Though the first edition was published in 1855, Whitman spent most of his professional life writing and re-writing it, revising it multiple times until his death. This resulted in vastly different editions over four decades--the first a small book of twelve poems and the last a compilation of over 400. This facsimile reproduces the typography and page layout of the original edition of 1855, and is in comparable size. It is hoped that the spirit of the poetry is better communicated in the type and format in which the poet originally expressed his craft.

Walt Whitman

(Author)

View Author's Page

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) is, undoubtedly, the most influential poet in American literature. He was born in West Hills, Long Island, the second of nine children in a family close to the Quaker creed. At the age of eleven, he finished his formal education and began working as an apprentice at the weekly The Patriot, where he would start writing his first texts. After working for other newspapers and magazines, in 1850 he decided to fully dedicate himself to poetry. Five years later, the first edition of the famous Leaves of Grass was published, consisting of twelve poems and whose 795 copies were funded by the author himself. The poetry collection aroused great interest and was widely distributed, partly due to the fascination it sparked in philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. During the Civil War, Whitman voluntarily served as a nurse in Washington D.C., an experience he would capture in The Great Army of the Sick (1863) and Memories of the War (1875). After the conflict ended in 1965, he published Drum-Taps. While employed at the Attorney General's Office, Whitman continued to raise the pen to write verses like those of "O Captain! My Captain!", which, along with others, would complete the successive editions of Leaves of Grass up to the ninth and definitive, which consisted of a total of more than four hundred poems.

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