[Literature] (Whitman, Walt) Leaves of Grass

Brooklyn, New York: (Fowler and Wells), 1856. Second edition (only printing, one of only 1,000 copies printed). 12mo. 384, (1) (ad) pp. Manuscript note laid in, "Edward D. Littledale / Presented by / Fowlers & Wells." Illustrated with an engraved frontispiece portrait of Whitman by Samuel Hollyer, with original tissue guard. Publisher's full green cloth-covered boards, stamped in blind and in gilt, spine faded, boards lightly rubbed; red sprinkled edges; yellow endpapers; foxing to frontispiece, endpapers, title-page and text leaves. Myerson A2.2; BAL 21396

Published one year following the first edition, Whitman dramatically enlarged and revised this edition, with the addition of 20 new poems not featured in the first. Other changes were the replacement of the frequently used ellipses with conventional punctuation, the inclusion of titles for each poem, as well as a table of contents. This edition also features an appendix "Leaves-Droppings," with reviews of the 1855 edition, as well as reprinting Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous July 21, 1855 letter to Whitman, along with Whitman's ten-page response. To Emerson's annoyance, Whitman had included in gilt on the spine Emerson's comment from that letter, "I greet you at the beginning of a great career.” Printed in this edition for the first time is Whitman's celebrated poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry", with its original title, "The Sun-Down Poem."

A near-fine and unsophisticated second edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.