Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”

Did you know that Special Collections’ Walt Whitman Collection contains around 80 separate editions of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, including most of the editions issued by the poet during his lifetime? Whitman was constantly revising and reorganizing Leaves of Grass, so a collection of the various editions he released provides scholars with a picture of how the text, and Whitman’s poetic expression, evolved. The newest addition to the Whitman collection is the fifth edition of Leaves, published in 1871.