Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Leaves of Grass, the centerpiece of Whitman's writing, and one of the most important books in US literary history, is also one of the most difficult texts in literary history to define. Whitman envisioned his magnum opus as a living, growing, organic creation, and he saw the book through six significantly different editions in his lifetime, most of which contained many variant issues. Today we are accustomed to a relative homogeneity among copies of a particular edition: modern printing and marketing ensure that, provided we both own either the hardback or paperback issue of a particular volume, the differences between your copy and mine will be almost imperceptible. But Whitman and his readers worked within a technologically different publishing economy, and most editions of Leaves of Grass would have been available in often strikingly different forms. Not only were alternate bindings available, but - because Whitman was such a tireless reviser and was so involved in the physical production of his own books - there were also significant textual variations among particular copies.Since Whitman's death, most publishers and readers have come to think of Leaves of Grass as synonymous with the “deathbed edition,” the expanded reissue of the 1881 edition that Whitman released in 1892. Indeed, Whitman asked that the deathbed edition be considered authoritative, and many - though not all ... log in or subscribe to read full text