Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (150th Anniversary Edition) [Hardcover]

Walt Whitman (Author), David S. Reynolds (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 2005

"I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease....observing a spear of summer grass."

So begins Leaves of Grass, the first great American poem and indeed, to this day, the greatest and most essentially American poem in all our national literature.

The publication of Leaves of Grass in July 1855 was a landmark event in literary history. Ralph Waldo Emerson judged the book "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has yet contributed." Nothing like the volume had ever appeared before. Everything about it--the unusual jacket and title page, the exuberant preface, the twelve free-flowing, untitled poems embracing every realm of experience--was new. The 1855 edition broke new ground in its relaxed style, which prefigured free verse; in its sexual candor; in its images of racial bonding and democratic togetherness; and in the intensity of its affirmation of the sanctity of the physical world.

This Anniversary Edition captures the typeface, design and layout of the original edition supervised by Whitman himself. Today's readers get a sense of the "ur-text" of Leaves of Grass, the first version of this historic volume, before Whitman made many revisions of both format and style. The volume also boasts an afterword by Whitman authority David Reynolds, in which he discusses the 1855 edition in its social and cultural contexts: its background, its reception, and its contributions to literary history. There is also an appendix containing the early responses to the volume, including Emerson's letter, Whitman's three self-reviews, and the twenty other known reviews published in various newspapers and magazines.

This special volume will be a must-have keepsake for fans of Whitman and lovers of American poetry.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As scholarship has made its importance to American letters more manifest, editions of the 1855 version of Whitman's masterpiece have multiplied. This one, prepared in honor of the poem's 150th anniversary, will be hard to beat. Edited by major Americanist Reynolds (Walt Whitman's America, etc.), it comes as close as possible, without being a facsimile, to reproducing Whitman's original text, which he famously self-published. The familiar litho of the young rough with open collar opens the book, and Reynold's terrific and informative afterword closes it, along with contemporary reviews (some written by Whitman himself) and Emerson's famous letter ("I greet you at the beginning of a great career..."). Those who know Whitman only through the beautiful but bloated 1892 "deathbed" edition of Leaves of Grass will find here a lean, searing celebration of self.
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About the Author

David S. Reynolds is Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Among his many books are Walt Whitman (part of Oxford's Lives and Legacies series), Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography, which won the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Beneath the American Renaissance, winner of the Christian Gauss Award. A regular contributor to The New York Times Book Review, he lives in Old Westbury, New York.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 184 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 150th anniversary edition (April 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195183428
• ISBN-13: 978-0195183429
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #220,571 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #7 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Anthologies

More About the Author

David S. Reynolds, a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, is the author or editor of 15 books, including "Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America," "Walt Whitman's America," "John Brown, Abolitionist," "Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson," "George Lippard," "Faith in Fiction," and "Beneath the American Renaissance." He is the winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Christian Gauss Award, the Ambassador Book Award, the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has been interviewed some 80 times on radio and TV, on shows including NPR's "Fresh Air," "Weekend Edition," and "The Diane Rehm Show," ABC's "The John Batchelor Show," and C-SPAN's "After Words," Brian Lamb's "Book Notes," and "Book TV." He is a regular contributor to "The New York Times Book Review" and is included in "Who's Who in America," "Who's Who in American Education," and "Who's Who in the World." David Reynolds was born in Providence, Rhode Island. For much of his childhood he lived in West Barrington, Rhode Island in a home attached to the Nayatt Point Lighthouse (built in 1828). His father, Paul Reynolds, sold life insurance and later became an artist. His mother, Adelaide Koch Reynolds, was an artist, art teacher, and sometime illustrator who designed newspapers ads and Hallmark greeting cards. David Reynolds attended the Providence Country Day School, where he later taught for a year after his graduation from college. He received the B.A. magna cum laude from Amherst College and the Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught American literature and American Studies at Northwestern University, Barnard College, New York University, Rutgers University, Baruch College, and the Sorbonne-Paris III. Since 2006, he has been at the CUNY Graduate Center. Besides writing and teaching, he enjoys songwriting and tennis as hobbies.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

134 of 157 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars This book ruined my life September 8, 2012

By W.W.

Format:Hardcover

Word to the not so wise: don't accept books with personal inscriptions written on the flyleaf. This also makes for poor bathroom reading.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Classic Beauty April 23, 2006

By Maggie Cherokee

Format:Hardcover

Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass reveals Whitman's passion for nearly every aspect of life, from amazement of great ships to the enchantment cast by the beauty of a sunset. The juxtaposition of ideas from line to line creates a vivid imagery throughout the poetry that gives the reader a sense of life as a whole; Whitman describes the broadness and complexity of his own experiences and thoughts with ease. Large sections of the collection are devoted to discussion of a broad array of subjects. For example, section three, entitled "Song of Myself", extends for about fifty pages and poems within the section are distinguished only by numbers. Although the numbers work to separate the ideas found in the passage, the thoughts still flow into one another, causing the text to present a challenging and sometimes exhausting read. However, other sections such as "Whispers of Heavenly Death" give relief from the dense material. These contain shorter poems with titles that usually aim to indicate the theme of the poem. They are more concise and easily understood, because Whitman appears to organize his thoughts, condense them, and put each one into a titled poem. Overall, the entire collection presents classic free verse poetry that retains timeless concepts and revelations of human emotions. And because of the grand style and often elevated language in the declarations Whitman uses to communicate his position on elements such as life, death, emotion, nature, heroes, love, politics, etc., the collection could be seen as something near contemporary epic poetry.

Leaves of Grass also demonstrates Whitman's incredible self-awareness; the lines in the poem "O Living Always, Always Dying" are an example of his confidence as they state, "O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am content;) O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and look at where I cast them, to pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind." The importance of this self-assurance is that Whitman creates a more stable bond between himself and the reader, because when he gives his advice the reader becomes more liable to accept it as a plausible truth.

This collection of poetry has much to offer to a variety of readers. Since it is so broad based, anyone should be able to read it and find some concept of interest. Whitman himself appears in his poetry as a diverse individual, and therefore more people can make a connection with him. And even if there happens to be little for one to relate to, the beautiful descriptions and classic language themselves can become valuable souvenirs in the reader's memory.

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't Try to Read it at One Sitting September 20, 2006

By moose/squirrel

Format:Hardcover

(This review is of Whitman's so-called "Deathbed Edition" and not the "150th Anniversary" *first* edition, which is where Amazon's computer placed it when it was submitted.).

Whitman is not the world's greatest poet - that's probably Shakespeare - but he's certainly been the most influential American poetic voice over the past century. He was the first poet to take all of American life as his subject. Ever the Romantic, Whitman was also the first poet to bring Romanticism into line with everyday reality.

His narcissism can be annoying, but his panoramic descriptions of life and the imagination have a singularly cumulative power. Some of his short poems ("A Noiseless Patient Spider" and "To a Locomotive in Winter")are individually memorable. The longer poem "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed," indirectly about the Lincoln assassination, is brilliant. I think most of his Civil War poems are overpraised, but "Come Up from the Fields, Father" is a masterpiece of its kind.

On the negative side, Whitman's transcendental philosophy, which he likes to indulge at length, will strike many readers as very sappy. His style, lots of details piled up on top of one another, grows monotonous, and readers who criticize his lack of traditional poetic craftsmanship cannot just be brushed off. My advice is to not to try to get through it all at once. The poems rarely become "difficult," they just tend to blur one into the other. Which may actually have been Whitman's intention.

Overall,there's never been a book quite like "Leaves of Grass," in any edition, and that's why it keeps selling as a true classic. In other words, a very old book that people still buy and read and enjoy even when no teacher is telling them to. Reading it will get you as close as one book can to actually living in nineteenth-century America, with all its follies, inequities, and promise.