Whitman, Walt

 

Leaves of Grass. Brooklyn: [For the author by Andrew and James Rome], 1855



Small folio (11 1/8 x 7 3/4 in.; 281 x 197 mm). Frontispiece portrait of the author by Hollyer after a photograph printed on thick paper, absolutely original tissue guard; frontispiece foxed as usual with tissue creased, diminishing dampstain to outer margin from title through p. 30, last two pages of introduction and first of text with a few minor chips to fore-edge. Publisher's dark green coarse-ribbed cloth, spine with gilt title and floral ornaments, corners of center of covers with blind-stamped floral ornaments, upper cover titled in ornamental, "rustic" gilt font all within triple-ruled frame, marbled endpapers, edges gilt; cloth of lower joint cleanly split, tiny hole to spine cloth at head with some fraying at head and tail but gilt spine ornaments only slightly faded, upper cover gilt bright with very minor rubbing and cloth slightly soiled along fore-edge, text block loosening.

Grolier, American 67; BAL 21395; Feinberg 269; Myerson A2.1.a1; PMM  340; Shay p. 15

First edition, first issue of one of the most attractive but  fragile books in American literature. This self-published effort by Whitman was  partially type-set  by the author. A run of 795 copies comprising the first edition were printed on the small handpress of the Romes on Cranberry Street in Brooklyn, with only 337 bound in this, the most ornate of the original cloth bindings. The subsequent cloth edition emphasized the blind stamping rather than gilt, an obvious exercise in reducing costs for a volume that was subject to an extremely limited distribution, with only a handful of copies dispersed at  any one time. The book was placed on sale at  Fowler & Wells on Broadway in New York and Swaynes on Fulton in Brooklyn, priced at two dollars. Sales were slow and it was later reduced to one dollar, but sales failed to improve and Whitman ended up giving away most copies personally.

"... Newspaperman, hack writer, philosopher, patriot, remarkable and very individual poet ... 'loafer' (his own word) and enigma, he challenges curiosity as one of the few towering American literary figures" (Bennett).

"... Leaves of Grass is imbued with the spirit of brotherhood and a pride in the democracy of the young American nation. In a sense, it is america's second declaration of independence: that of 1776 was political, that of 1855 intellectual" (Printing and the Mind of Man).