Books by Walt Whitman

Book SynopsisWith an Introduction and Bibliography by Stephen Matterson, Trinity College, Dublin. Walt Whitman's verse gave the poetry of America a distinctive national voice. It reflects the unique vitality of the new nation, the vastness of the land and the emergence of a sometimes troubled consciousness, communicated in language and idiom regarded by many at the time as shocking. Whitman's poems are organic and free flowing, fit into no previously defined genre and skilfully combine autobiographical, sociological and religious themes with lyrical sensuality. His verse is a fitting celebration of a new breed of American and includes 'Song of Myself', 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry', the celebratory 'Passage to India', and his fine elegy for the assassinated President Lincoln, 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd'.

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Book SynopsisAs Malcolm Cowley says in his introduction, the first edition of Leaves of Grass ''might be called the buried masterpiece of American writing'', for it exhibits ''Whitman at his best, Whitman at his freshest in vision and boldest in language, Whitman transformed by a new experience.'' Mr Cowley has taken the first edition from its narrow circulation among scholars, faithfully edited it, added his own introduction and Whitman''s original introduction (which never appeared in any other edition during Whitman''s life), and returned it to the common readership to whom the great poet really speaks.Trade Review“Whitman, the great poet, has meant so much to me. Whitman the one man breaking a way ahead. Whitman the one pioneer . . . Ahead of Whitman, nothing. Ahead of all poets, pioneering into the wilderness of unopened life, Whitman. Beyond him, none.” —D. H. Lawrence

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Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the starsFirst published in 1855, and edited, revised and expanded over thirty years, Leaves of Grass' has become one of the most celebrated poetry collections in the history of American literature. A master of free verse, Walt Whitman captures the true spirit of his homeland and its people through his poetry. He explores a wide range of themes, encompassing American identity and cultural values, democracy, nature and the mysteries of the human spirit.Featuring the poems of the original 1855 edition, Leaves of Grass' remains an influential work within the American literary tradition, studied and treasured around the world.Trade Review‘I greet you at the beginning of a great career.’ Letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Walt Whitman, 1855 ‘The most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson ‘America's poet… He is America.’ Ezra Pound ‘If you are American, then Walt Whitman is your imaginative father and mother, even if, like myself, you have never composed a line of verse.’ Harold Bloom, literary critic

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Book SynopsisLeaves of Grass is Walt Whitman’s glorious poetry collection, first published in 1855, which he revised and expanded throughout his lifetime. It was ground-breaking in its subject matter and in its direct, unembellished style. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is edited and introduced by Professor Bridget Bennett.Whitman wrote about the United States and its people, its revolutionary spirit and about democracy. He wrote openly about the body and about desire in a way that completely broke with convention and which paved the way for a completely new kind of poetry. This new collection is taken from the final version, the Deathbed edition, and it includes his most famous poems such as ‘Song of Myself’ and ‘I Sing the Body Electric’.Trade ReviewThere is no one in this great wide world of America whom I love and honour so much -- Oscar WildeI am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of Leaves of Grass. I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has ever produced -- Ralph Waldo EmersonWhitman, the great poet, has meant so much to me. Whitman the one man breaking a way ahead. Whitman the one pioneer . . . Ahead of Whitman, nothing. Ahead of all poets, pioneering into the wilderness of unopened life, Whitman. Beyond him, none -- D. H. LawrenceHis [Whitman’s] Song of Himself was a song for humanity, too. And in spite of all that has happened since, it still echoes here * Independent *Whitman had a fluid personality that made him able to “merge” invisibly, and with great empathy, with the images of other people and events that lodged in his mind . . . unprecedented assembling of rhythm, sound, language and images * New York Times *[Leaves of Grass is] more about the pandemic of possibility, a fever rush of extraordinary beauty in the face of all the available evidence. -- Colum McCann * The Week *Table of ContentsIntroduction - i: Introduction Unit - 1: Inscriptions Chapter - 1: To Foreign Lands Chapter - 2: Song of Myself Chapter - 3: When I Read The Book Chapter - 4: To The States Chapter - 4: Shut Not Your Doors Unit - 2: Children of Adam Chapter - 1: I Sing the Body Electric Chapter - 2: A Woman Waits for Me Unit - 3: Calamus Chapter - 1: In Paths Untrodden Chapter - 2: Scented Herbage of my Breast Chapter - 3: Whoever You are Holding Me Now in Hand Chapter - 4: For You O Democracy Chapter - 5: The Base of All Metaphysics Chapter - 6: Recorders Ages Hence Chapter - 7: When I Heard at the Close of Day Chapter - 8: Are You the New Person Drawn toward Me Chapter - 9: I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing Chapter - 10: To a Stranger Chapter - 11: This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful Chapter - 12: I Hear it was Charged Against Me Chapter - 13: When I Peruse the Conquer'd Flame Chapter - 14: We Two Boys together Clinging Chapter - 15: No Labor-Saving Machine Chapter - 16: A Glimpse Chapter - 17: What Think You I Take Pen in Hand? Chapter - 18: Sometimes with One I Love Chapter - 19: Song of the Open Road Chapter - 20: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry Unit - 4: Birds of Passage Chapter - 1: Pioneers! O Pioneers! Unit - 5: Sea Drift Chapter - 1: Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking Unit - 6: By the Roadside Chapter - 1: When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer Unit - 7: Drum Taps Chapter - 1: Beat! Beat! Drums! Chapter - 2: Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night Chapter - 3: The Wound-Dresser Chapter - 4: The Artilleryman's Vision Chapter - 5: O Tan-Faced Prairie Boy Chapter - 6: How Solemn as One by One Chapter - 7: As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado Chapter - 8: Spirit Whose Work is Done Unit - 8: Memoirs of President Lincoln Chapter - 1: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd Chapter - 2: O Captain! My Captain! Chapter - 3: Hush'd be the Camps To-day Chapter - 4: By Blue Ontario's Shores Unit - 9: Autumn Rivulets Chapter - 1: There was a Child went Forth Chapter - 2: The City Dead-House Chapter - 3: Passage to India Chapter - 4: Prayer of Columbus Chapter - 5: The Sleepers Unit - 10: Whispers of Heavenly Death Chapter - 1: A Noiseless Patient Spider Unit - 11: From Noon to Starry Night Chapter - 1: The Mystic Trumpeter Unit - 12: Annex to Sands at Seventy Chapter - 1: As I Sit Writing Here Chapter - 2: Queries to My Seventieth Year Chapter - 3: Old Salt Kossabone Index - ii: Index of Poem Titles Index - iii: Index of First Lines

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Book SynopsisFirst published in 1855 and extended by the author over the course of more than three decades, Leaves of Grass embodies Walt Whitman’s lifetime ambition to create a new voice that could capture the spirit and vibrancy of the young American nation, while celebrating at the same time “Nature without check with original energy”. Famously written in free verse and brimming with sensuous imagery and an unbridled love of nature and life in all its forms, and containing celebrated poems such as the ebullient ‘Song of Myself’ – described by Jay Parini as the greatest American poem ever written – and the elegiac ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’, Leaves of Grass is not only the finest achievement of a highly unique poet, but a founding text for American literature and modern poetry. Considered one of the most influential poets in American literature and a pioneer of free verse, Walt Whitman (1819–92) was also a prolific writer of essays and articles. Controversial in its time, his sprawling collection Leaves of Grass is regarded as his magnum opus.Trade ReviewWhitman, the great poet, has meant so much to me. Whitman the one man breaking a way ahead. Whitman the one pioneer… Ahead of Whitman, nothing. Ahead of all poets, pioneering into the wilderness of unopened life, Whitman. Beyond him, none. -- D.H. Lawrence

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Book SynopsisA collectible new Penguin Classics series: stunning, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets, which present each poet''s most famous book of verse as it was originally published. Designed by the acclaimed Coralie Bickford-Smith and beautifully set, these slim, A format volumes are the ultimate gift for poetry lovers. In 1855 Walt Whitman published his first collection of poetry, Leaves of Grass. The volume received great praise from leading Transcendentalist poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. This encouraged what would become a lifelong project as Whitman expanded and rewrote the volume until his death in 1892. Whitman''s innovative use of free verse and the quotidian achieved his aim of reaching out to the everyday American. This edition, based on the earliest published version of 1855, features Whitman''s most famous poem ''Song of Myself'', an American epic inspired by his personal experiences.

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Book SynopsisThe most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Inspired by transcendentalism, Whitman''s immortal collection includes some of the greatest poems of modern times, including his masterpiece Song of Myself. Shattering standard conventions of symbolism and allegory, it stands as an unabashed celebration of body and nature.

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Book SynopsisWalt Whitman was born on 31 May 1819 in Long Island, New York. Without much formal education, he began work at an early age as an office boy, printer and school teacher. His first major collection of poetry, Leaves of Grass, was self-published in 1855. During the American Civil War, Whitman volunteered as a nurse at military hospitals in Washington, and his experiences inspired his next collection, Drum-Taps, published in 1865, and Memoranda During the War (1875). Whitman was an ardent Democrat, and wrote several poems to Abraham Lincoln, including O Captain! My Captain'. His poetry was seen by many as immoral, and was the cause of his dismissal from a post as clerk in the Department of the Interior, but he won praise from his contemporaries Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and his work was enthusiastically received by poetic circles in England. Having survived a paralysing stroke in 1873, Whitman left Washington for Camden, New Jersey, where heTrade ReviewGrand but intimate, earthy but also dreamy * Observer *Whitman had a fluid personality that made him able to ''merge'' invisibly, and with great empathy, with the images of other people and events that lodged in his mind...unprecedented assembling of rhythm, sound, language and images * New York Times *The great unrhymed, long-lined, self-celebratory sensation of the 1850s * Lost Angeles Times *

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Book SynopsisFrom Leaves of Grass to Song of Myself, all of Whitman's poetry in one volumeIn 1855 Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass, the work that defined him as one of America’s most influential voices and that he added to throughout his life. A collection of astonishing originality and intensity, it spoke of politics, sexual emancipation, and what it meant to be an American. From the joyful “Song of Myself” and “I Sing the Body Electric” to the elegiac “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” Whitman’s art fuses oratory, journalism, and song in a vivid celebration of humanity. Containing all Whitman’s known poetic work, this edition reprints the final, or “deathbed,” edition of Leaves of Grass (1891–92). Earlier versions of many poems are also given, including the 1855 “Song of Myself.”   • Features a completely new—and fuller&md

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Book SynopsisThe perfect introduction to one of the most influential American poets - includes the controversial 'Leaves of Grass'

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Book SynopsisIt was with this first version of "Song of Myself," from the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, that Whitman first made himself known to the world. Readers of revised editions will find this version surprising, and often superior. A selection of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

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Book SynopsisThe 'Complete Prose Works' by Walt Whitman is a compilation of his writings from the 19th and 20th centuries, featuring his distinct writing styles and literary themes. Numerous short stories, poetry, and novels are included, all written by one of America's most renowned poets. The narrative content, which discusses love, life, and mortality, is heartrending and eloquent. Anecdotes about comical ghosts are sporadically intertwined with dramatic and animated tunes that exalt the untamed splendor of the natural world and attempt to decipher the essence of existence in this publication. The author's collection of literary compositions eloquently showcases his signature voice and inimitable flair, solidifying his position as an esteemed name in American literature. Belief in human spirit, nature appreciation, and advocating for just society are motifs in Whitman's literature.

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Book SynopsisThis new annotated edition inlcudes "Live Oak, with Moss" and prose selections from "Democratic Vistas" and "Specimen Days". The text also presents a collection of Whitman's statements about his role as a poet taken from his notebooks, letters, conversations and newspaper articles.

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Book SynopsisLeaves of Grass is a wonderful poetry collection written by American poet Walt Whitman. First edition of this collection was published in 1855 with twelve poems. Through out his life, he revised this composition and after four decades, it was compiled in a collection of 400 poems. In these poems he expressed philosophy of life and humanity. He has written praiseworthy poems on nature. He didn't follow rhyme and standard rules for meter and line length rather he set his own style. He emerges as a hero in epic 'Song of Myself'. His incredible writing depicts as he has seen all the world. He has written all sorts of poems like - social, political, personal and sexual in nature. His poetic journey and self exploration are most commendable, represents his philosophy of life. He has shown an impressive comparison between fallen autumn leaves and rebirth of a new life after death. His passionate writing is delightful and pleasure giving. He expresses his deep concern for people's individuality and immortality. 'Song of the Open Road' is such a marvellous composition. In his poems as a true patriotic citizen he sings for glorious America.

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Book SynopsisThe young journalist and reformer Horace Traubel visited Whitman nearly every day at his home in Camden, New Jersey. Whitman liked to talk, especially about the big issues, spiritual, political - all he'd learned over seven decades of peace and war. To mark the bicentenary of Walt Whitman's death, Carcanet presents Brenda Wineapple's distillation from these conversations with the great American poet. Whitman speaks from the heart, an old man who changed the course of American poetry and, by extension, the poetries of Europe, Asia, Latin America. Here, too, is the poet's worldly side - recalling the opprobrium heaped on Leaves of Grass for its poetic risks and sexual frankness; memories of Thoreau, Emerson and Lincoln; his judgments of Shakespeare, Goethe and Tolstoy; and his sense of the Nation.

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Book SynopsisAmerican poet Walt Whitman made a close relationship with English writer Anne Gilchrist. Here are collection of their correspondence in this book. After reading Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass for the first time Anne Gilchrist instantly written a letter to the author to convey her delight in his poems and to thank him for their publication. From Whitman's reply was emerge an writing relationship between the two writers, the substance of which is contained within this interesting collection. This book is a decent view of a life well-lived (Anne's) and while most of it is basically a fan girl letter to Whitman, even calling him godlike at one point. As to the particular set of letters presented, most of these letters are from Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman, a few are replies to her letters, and a few are letters from her children to Whitman. Their correspondence was began through William Michael Rossetti, English writer and critic who edited Whitman's works and this correspondence was initiated with Gilchrist's letter to Whitman in the form of a critical essay she wrote in his defence called 'A Women's Estimate of Walt Whitman'.

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Book SynopsisA collection of poetry by the 19th-century American poet, Walt Whitman.

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Book SynopsisIn December of 1862, having read his brother''s name in a casualty list, Walt Whitman rushed from Brooklyn to the war front, where he found his brother wounded but recovering. But Whitman also found there a new world, a world dense with horror and revelation. Memoranda During the War is Whitman''s testament to the anguish, heroism, and terror of the Civil War. The book consists of journal entries extending from Whitman''s arrival on the front in 1862 through to the war''s conclusion in 1865. Whitman details his encounters with soldiers and doctors, meditates on particular battles and on the meanings of the war for the nation, and recounts his wordless though peculiarly intimate public exchanges with President Lincoln, a man Whitman saw often on the streets of Washington and by whom he was deeply fascinated. The book offers an astounding amalgam of death portraits, anecdotes of battle, last words, messages to distant loved ones, and remarkably restrained and muted descriptions of pain,Trade ReviewCoviello has done an excellent job here: the text itself, and the wonderfully argued and informative introduction to it, will, without doubt, help redirect studies of Whitman by throwing his post-Civil War writings into clearer contexts and a much sharper focus. * Nick Selby, Modern Languages Review, vol 102, part 1 *

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