1855
Leaves of Grass. Brooklyn, New York. 1855.
First edition. Twelve poems.
Imperial octavo, pink paper wrappers.
"Leaves of Grass" printed in block letters across front wrapper, end wrapper blank. Steel engraved portrait, title, uncaptioned preface, xii, Leaves of Grass, pp. 95, end blank.
The author's name appears only in the copyright notice, and in the first poem: "Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos."
The poems, twelve in number, are without titles. In the present authorized edition they appear under the following titles:
Song of Myself.
A Song for Occupations.
To Think of Time.
The Sleepers.
I Sing the Body Electric.
Faces.
Song of the Answer (part one).
Europe.
A Boston Ballad.
There Was a Child Went Forth.
Who Learns My Lesson Complete.
Great Are the Myths.
The preface was later worked into three poems:
By Blue Ontario's Shore.
Song of Prudence.
To a Foil'd European Revolutionaire.
There are three variations of the first edition. The one noted above in pink wrappers is unquestionably the first issue. The second issue is bound in green cloth, gilt edges, and with the title stamped in rustic letters in gilt on the front cover. The last issue of this edition has all the points of the second issue with eight pages of press notices bound in at the front.
Less than nine hundred copies were printed in July, 1855, in the printshop of Andrew H. Rome, 98 Cranberry Street, Brooklyn, the author assisting in the type composition and presswork. The volume was placed on sale at Fowler & Wells, Broadway, New York, and at Swaynes, in Fulton Street, Brooklyn, at two dollars, but was later reduced to one dollar. Very few copies were sold; Whitman giving almost the entire edition to critics and friends.
Catalogued from the Maier copy.
A reprint of this edition was issued in January, 1920, by Mr. Thomas B. Mosher, Portland, Maine.