Leaves of Grass.

WHITMAN, Walt.

Item Number: 4314

Camden, New Jersey: Author's Edition, 1882.

Author’s edition of the most important volume of American poetry. Octavo, original green cloth, with two portraits of the author printed on sheets extraneous to the text, the first between pages 28 and 29, and the wood-engraved portrait between pages 296 and 297. Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “Mrs. Jane Ingram from the author April 3 1885.” Also, additionally signed by Walt Whitman on the title page. In very good condition with some light rubbing and wear. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Rare and desirable signed twice by Whitman.

"Always the champion of the common man, Whitman is both the poet and the prophet of democracy In a sense, it is America’s second Declaration of Independence: that of 1776 was political, this of 1855 intellectual" (PMM 340). The most important and influential volume of poetry written in America, Whitman’s literary masterpiece, Leaves of Grass is "one of the most magnificent fabrications of modern times he never surrendered his vision of himself as one who might go forth among the American people and astonish them" (DAB). "The book is quite a rarity and is seldom found in good condition" (Wells & Goldsmith, pp. 5-6).