1894 Leaves of Grass

Description

Publishers' Original Binding

An early printing of the famed 1892 'Deathbed Edition' of American poet Walt Whitman's major work, 'Leaves of Grass'. This was the final edition to be published in Whitman's lifetime, only months before his death, and extended the work to be composed of almost 400 poems.

This 1894 printing of that edition is in the same publisher's original cloth binding, with 'complete 1892' in gilt to the back strip.

Lacking the original frontispiece, and with a newspaper clipping portrait of Whitman pasted to face the title page in its place.

First published in 1855, Whitman spent the majority of his life writing and rewriting this work, resulting in vastly different editions being produced over the course of four decades. The collection of loosely connected poems represents the celebration of Whitman's view of life and humanity, and praising nature and the individual's role in it. Rather than focusing on religious or spiritual matters, Whitman controversially focuses primarily on the body and the material world.

With the contemporary inscription of 'Albert Platt', 1895, to a front endpaper. 

A lovely copy of this late nineteenth century edition of one of the most important works of American poetry, published only two years after the author's death.