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  “AMERICA’S SECOND DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE”: RARE "Suppressed Boston Edition" OF WALT WHITMAN’S LEAVES OF GRASS, THE MOST IMPORTANT AND INFLUENTIAL VOLUME OF AMERICAN POETRY

  WHITMAN, Walt.

  Leaves of Grass.

  Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1881-82.

  The "suppressed Boston edition" (seventh edition overall) of the most important volume in American poetry, one of 1,010 copies printed. Octavo, original publisher's mustard cloth with gilt titles and tooling to the spine and front panel, tissue-guarded engraved portrait of the author by Hollyer after the daguerreotype by Gabriel Harrison opposite page 29. BAL 21418. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "Dr. C H Shivers from the author." The recipient, Dr. C.H. Shivers was a Haddonfield, New Jersey-based physician, member of the New Jersey Medical Society for Camden County and friend and dinner companion of Whitman's (according to The Collected Writings of Walt Whitman, Vol. 4, Correspondence of Walt Whitman, 1989). The Suppressed Edition was the earliest edition to have Leaves of Grass in what is considered the book's final form. The suppressed edition's electroplates were used in all later editions, including the so-called "Death Bed Edition." "On March 1, 1882, Oliver Stevens, district attorney for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, suggested to James R. Osgood & Co., that this edition should be withdrawn from publication because of its obscene nature. After some discussion between Whitman, the publishers and the attorney ge...

  Price: $12,500.00     Item Number: 139829

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