Several years in the making, McSweeney’s presents a gorgeous cloth-bound, hardcover, two-book edition of Leaves of Grass, stuffed to the brim with a dazzling array of ephemera designed to deeply enhance readers’ appreciation of Whitman’s original masterpiece. In addition to the original, full-length work (presented precisely as Whitman desired), readers will find a second volume filled with his notebook and manuscript pages—generously made available to us and to all by the Walt Whitman Archive—totaling 344 pages of handwriting, cross outs, substitutions, and notes to both himself and his publishers. These materials provide crucial insight into how this magnificent work was created and was considered and reconsidered over the years by its author. Volume OneThe complete and unabridged 1891–2 deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass Volume TwoHundreds of pages of scanned handwritten drafts, manuscripts, notes, and more, made by WhitmanEarly drafts of Song of Myself, A Prairie Sunset, I Am the Poet of Sin, and moreHandwritten edits and instructions to printersCorrespondence between Whitman and Ralph Waldo EmersonPencil sketches, cover designs, and drawings by WhitmanA host of previously unpublished and abandoned poemsAnd much more
About the Author
Walt Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse.
