Leaves of Grass.

WHITMAN, Walt.

Item Number: 111723

Portland: Thomas Bird Mosher, 1920.

First facsimile edition, second impression of Walt Whitman’s landmark work. Quarto, bound in original cloth, gilt titles and tooling. One of 500 copies (second impression). Fine in the original plain cream paper dust jacket with printed title on spine, light shelfwear. With the original slipcase in very good condition.

“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).