Unique Elements • Historical Context • Detailed Nineteenth-Century Historical Timeline An American Humanist Literary Classic by Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass by American poet, essayist, and journalist Walt Whitman is a collection of literary poetry first published in 1855 in the United States. A celebrated poetry anthology classic filled with over 400 poems written and published over thirty-seven years. Excerpt ‘ I sing the body electric, The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul. Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves? And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead? And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul? And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?’ Synopsis Twelve anonymous poems and an introductory prelude made up the initial edition of Leaves of Grass, which was self-published in 1855 by an unidentified but ferociously ambitious young poet. Through six editions and nearly four decades, Walt Whitman spent the remainder of his life-enhancing and modifying this work, making Leaves of Grass one of the key texts in the annals of world poetry. This edition reproduces the exquisite "death-bed edition," which was released in 1892, only two months before Walt Whitman passed away at the age of 72. Title Details ✓ Original text of the 1891-92 “Deathbed” edition ✓ Poetry, United States Classics ✓ 6 x 9 in ✓ Matte Cover ✓ Cream Paper