Leaves of Grass ~ Walt Whitman ~ Illustrated by Rockwell Kent ~ order 1977, Easton Press ~ Leather, Spine Hubs, Integral Bookmark ~ As New

Leaves of Grass

By Walt Whitman

Illustrated by Rockwell Kent

The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Collector's Edition

Bound in Genuine Leather

1977, The Easton Press, Norwalk, Connecticut

Sewn binding. Dark Green leather over boards with gilt decoration on front and back and design and lettering on spine. Integral ribbon marker sewn in. Four spine hubs. All edges of leaves gilt. Moiré endpapers. 9.25", 527 pages, publisher's preface, Contents, Preface to 1855 edition, poems, rejected poems, alphabetical title index, included an unused, unattached Easton Press bookplate (see last image)

As New. Ribbon bookmark looks to have never been disturbed.

From the Publisher's Preface

Upon receipt of a copy of the first edition of "Leaves of Grass" in 1855, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote to Walt Whitman: "I greet you at the beginning of a great career." Emerson, then 52, was respected throughout America as "the sage of Concord." Renowned as a philosopher, essayist, and poet, he wielded sufficient influence to counteract the scorn with which other critics treated the unconventional little volume. Although that first edition contained only a dozen poems, one of them was Whitman's most famous single work, the two-thousand-line "song of Myself."

The striking originality of "Leaves of Grass," first published when the author was 36, could not have been anticipated by anyone familiar with his earlier career. Born in 1819 near Huntington, New York, Whitman had little schooling. Having learned the printing trade, he worked at it in Brooklyn and Manhattan, but alternated his printing jobs with periods of undistinguished writing. At one time he was even an itinerant schoolteacher.

In 1873 the poet suffered a paralytic stroke ... he moved to Camden, New Jersey, and from then on Whitman's writing - as Professor James D. hart points out - "shows a change of thought. His realistic style is altered to one of indirection and suggestion; his materialistic pantheism becomes a more spiritualized idealism; his political views change from individualism to nationalism, and even internationalism; and in general he becomes less interested in freedom than in regulation."

By now the work of "the good gray poet" had become well known in Great Britain and order was being acclaimed by such writers as Robert Louis Stevenson, William Rossetti, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. The final decade of Whitman's life was enlivened by visits from writers and artists from all over the world. By the time of his death at the age of 73, the poet had become a legend.

BEP