Whitman, Walt

8vo (7 3/4 x 5 in.; 197 x 128 mm). "Remembrance Copy" leaf and 2 engraved portraits of Whitman, advertisement leaf at end. Publisher's dark purplish cloth, covers with blind-stamped frame, upper cover gilt-lettered, all edges gilt, light green floral-embossed endpapers; rubbed, extremities a bit worn, especially front joint, repair to interior, some loss to spine ends.

Elmer E. Stafford ("Remembrance Copy" leaf inscription)

BAL 21409; Feinberg 294; Myerson A8.1.a; Wells & Goldsmith 19–20

FIRST EDITION, SECOND ISSUE, WITH THE DESIRABLE "REMEMBRANCE COPY" LEAF INSCRIBED AND SIGNED BY WHITMAN. This copy was presented to Elmer E. Stafford (1861–1957), cousin of Harry Stafford, a young man whom Whitman befriended in 1876 in Camden. Of this scarce "Remembrance" issue, Wells and Goldsmith state that it is "impossible that more than 100 copies were issued" (most of the 1,000 sets of sheets of Memoranda were bound in the collective form of Two Rivulets, 1876).