Publisher Description

In May 1860, Walt Whitman published a third edition of "Leaves of Grass." His timing was compelling. Printed during a period of regional, ideological, and political divisions, written by a poet intimately concerned with the idea of a United States as "essentially the greatest poem," this new edition was Whitman's last best hope for national salvation. Now available in a facsimile edition, "Leaves of Grass, 1860" faithfully reproduces Whitman's attempt to create a "Great construction of the New Bible" to save the nation on the eve of civil war and, for the first time, frames the book in historical rather than literary terms.
In his third edition, Whitman added 146 new poems to the 32 that comprised the second edition, reorganized the book into a bible of American civic religion that could be cited chapter and verse, and included erotic poetry intended to bind the nation in organic harmony. This 150th anniversary edition includes a facsimile reproduction of the original 1860 volume, a thought-provoking introduction by antebellum historian and Whitman scholar Jason Stacy that situates Whitman in nineteenth-century America, and annotations that provide detailed historical context for Whitman's poems.
A profoundly rich product of a period when America faced its greatest peril, this third edition finds the poet transforming himself into a prophet of spiritual democracy and the Whitman we celebrate today--boisterous, barbaric, and benevolent. Reprinting it now continues the poet's goal of proclaiming for "the whole of America for each / individual, without exception . . . uncompromising liberty and equality."

Author Biography

Walt Whitman (1819-1892), arguably one of America's most influential and innovative poets, was born into a working-class family in West Hills, New York, and grew up in Brooklyn. His "Leaves of Grass, " from which "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" comes, is considered one of the central volumes in the history of world poetry. While most other major writers of his time enjoyed a highly structured, classical education at private institutions, Whitman forged his own rough and informal curriculum, and his brief stint at teaching suggests that Whitman employed what were then progressive techniqu

Review Quote

"The University of Iowa Press continues its indispensable service to Whitman scholarship with this new edition of the 1860Leaves of Grass. Jason Stacy refrains from calling the 1860 edition the greatest of all the editions that Whitman published in his lifetime, so we will have to do it for him: those that came before were smaller, while those that came after represent fallings-away from this towering and encompassing enchantment, the greatest book yet from an American poet. Stacy understands the 1860Leavesas an instance of political history as well as of inspiration, and his unraveling of Walt's motives as he conceived his New Bible of spirit and nationhood is richly persuasive."-Robert Roper, author,Now the Drum of War: Walt Whitman and His Brothers in the Civil War

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