Walt Whitman | Leaves of Grass, Brooklyn, 1855, first edition, first issue, original green cloth, the Doheny copy

Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass. Brooklyn: [for the author], 1855

FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE, small folio (277 x 193 mm), engraved frontispiece portrait of Whitman by Hollyer on thick paper with tissue guard (state A), copyright notice printed on the reverse of the title page on two lines (state B), original green cloth (Binding A), covers with rustic gilt lettering, blindstamped floral designs, all within triple gilt border fillet, spine with gilt floral designs and lettering, gilt edges, marbled endpapers, without the eight pages of press advertisements inserted in later copies, housed in a modern grey-green morocco solander case, light offsetting in upper margin of frontispiece, neatly repaired 2.5cm closed tear to lower margin of p.vii, spine skillfully repaired, minor wear to extremities, minor soiling on front cover, edges of solander case split

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass...."

The self-published first edition of Leaves of Grass is one of the great landmarks of American letters: it introduced to the world a highly distinctive poetic voice that continues to resonate through American poetry to this day. It was published in an edition of 795 copies, printed on the small handpress of the Andrew and Tom Rome on Cranberry Street in Brooklyn. Only 337 of these copies were bound like the present copy with gilt lettering on both front and rear covers, gilt edges, and marbled endpapers. These finishing touches were eliminated from the second issue in an effort to cut production costs.

The book was placed on sale at Fowler & Wells on Broadway in New York, and Swaynes on Fulton in Brooklyn in late June 1855, priced at two dollars. Sales were slow and it was later reduced to one dollar, but sales failed to improve and Whitman ended up giving away most copies personally. 

Contemporary reviews were mostly negative, although there were dissenting voices who were quick to recognise Whitman’s unique genius, such English critic William Michael Rossetti (see next lot). It was a private letter from the great Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson that meant most to Whitman: “I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed […] I greet you at the beginning of a great career.” Whitman almost immediately began revising and augmenting Leaves of Grass — a process that would continue for the rest of his life — and he published an augmented edition in 1856, proudly including Emerson’s letter as an appendix. Whitman’s continual reworking of Leaves of Grass meant that the text of the first edition largely disappeared from view for more than a century, until a paperback edition appeared in 1959.



This exceptionally fresh copy of Leaves of Grass was owned by two great collectors prior to Stanley Seeger: the Californian Carrie Estelle Doheny (1875-1958) and the New Yorker Richard Manney (1936-2024).

PROVENANCE:

Estelle Doheny, morocco bookplate, sale of her collection, Christie's, in Camarillo, California, 1 February 1988, lot 1005; Richard Manney: bookplate, his sale, Sotheby’s New York, 11 October 1991, lot 312 

LITERATURE:

Feinberg/Detroit 269; Grolier American 67; Wells & Goldsmith 3-5