[Literature] Whitman, Walt Complete Poems & Prose of Walt Whitman 1855...1888. Authenticated & Personal Book (handled by W.W.)...Portraits from Life...Autograph

Signed Copy of Whitman's Complete Works

(Philadelphia, 1888). First edition (one of only 600 copies printed). Tall 8vo. (iv), 382, 374, 140, 2 pp. Boldly signed by Whitman on Leaves of Grass title-page. Presentation copy, inscribed by Whitman's literary executor and biographer Horace Traubel to G. Garson Freund on front free endpaper: "To G. Garson Freund / Philada / Oct 11 1892 / through / Horace L. Traubel." Illustrated with a vignette portrait of Whitman on general title-page, and three printed portraits at pp. 29, 296, and 374. Publisher's three-quarter green cloth over marbled paper-covered boards, paper spine label, extremities and boards rubbed, spine label moderately worn, spine ends lightly frayed; top edge trimmed, other edges untrimmed; Freund's book-plate on front paste-down; in green cloth fall-down-back box. Myerson A2.7.m; BAL 21431; Wells and Goldsmith, pp. 31-32

The definitive edition of the complete works of Whitman published during his lifetime, in only 600 copies, and boldly signed by Whitman. This edition is comprised of slightly altered plates of the 1882 Philadelphia edition of Leaves of Grass, slightly altered plates of the 1883 Glasgow edition of Specimen Days & Collect, and the sheets of the 1888 second printing of November Boughs. This copy with BAL A binding and without the handwritten limitation statement on verso of "Note at Beginning."