4 Walt Whitman first editions are documented on this shelf, from Leaves of Grass (1855) to Leaves of Grass ('Deathbed' edition, 1891–92) (1860) across 4 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Walt Whitman title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.
Identification only, per the house rule: no prices and no appraisals here. Checking a Walt Whitman copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.
- Leaves of Grass — 18551855 first edition, self-published, printed by the Rome Brothers, Brooklyn; a tall (quarto-format) volume, about 11½ inches. No author name on the title page (Whitman appears only in the copyright notice and within the poems). Frontispiece: steel engraving by Samuel Hollyer (c. 1854) after a lost daguerreotype by Gabriel Harrison, showing Whitman in workman's dress, hat cocked, hand on hip (Myerson records two…. The 1855 self-published first is the true first; about 795 copies were printed and fewer than half were bound in the gilt green cloth, so many copies survive in the plainer B binding or in wrappers. The fully-gilt Binding A (marbled endpapers, all edges gilt) is the primary state. Whitman-inscribed copies are the association apex. The 1856 second and later enlarged editions have a different collation (the 1856 famously adds Emerson's 'I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career' gilt on the spine) and are not the 1855 first. Facsimiles and reprints lack the original cloth, the gilt rustic lettering, the marbled endpapers and gilt edges of Binding A, and the quality of the Hollyer frontispiece plate.
- Leaves of Grass (1855 first edition) — 1855 · Self-published, printed by Andrew & James RomeSelf-published first edition; the binder's records account for about 795 copies bound in stages between June 1855 and January 1856, in cloth and in plain wrappers/boards. BAL/Blanck records three binding states, all genuine 1855 issues: Binding A — dark green cloth with a triple-ruled gilt border, blind-stamped floral ornaments, the title in gilt with rayed lettering, marbled endpapers and gilt edges (the…. US true first, self-published 1855, sheets printed at the Rome brothers' (Andrew & James Rome) Brooklyn shop and distributed by the phrenological firm Fowler & Wells. All three binding states (A gilt cloth, B blindstamped cloth, C wrappers) and both frontispiece states are genuine 1855 copies; the elaborately gilt Binding A is the earliest and most sought binding, but a plainer Binding B or a wrappered Binding C…. Numerous facsimiles exist. Genuineness rests on the Rome-printed quarto sheets, the period cloth or wrappers, and the engraved-plate frontispiece states — NOT on the presence of gilt decoration: a genuine copy may be in gilt Binding A, in blindstamped Binding B, or in plain wrappers (Binding C). Facsimiles are betrayed by modern paper, photographic reproduction of the type and of the frontispiece plate, and the….
- Leaves of Grass (1860–61, 'third edition') — 1860 · Thayer & EldridgeThird edition, greatly enlarged (456 pages), Thayer & Eldridge, Boston, 1860-61. Issued in a variety of decorated cloth bindings (orange, green, brown) with gilt and blind stamping. Engraved frontispiece portrait of Whitman by Stephen Alonzo Schoff after a painting by Charles Hine, with calligraphic title and ornamental motifs. The genuine issue carries the Thayer & Eldridge imprint; the firm failed in 1861. The Thayer & Eldridge printing is the true 1860 third edition. The electrotype plates were later acquired by Richard Worthington, who from 1879 printed unauthorized 'Boston' reprints that Whitman repudiated. Confirm the Thayer & Eldridge imprint and the publisher's decorated binding; the unauthorized Worthington plate-reprints lack the printers' imprint on the copyright page. Worthington and other plate-reprints postdate the original and were disowned by Whitman; they lack the original Thayer & Eldridge imprint and binding and may omit the copyright-page printers' imprint.
- Leaves of Grass ('Deathbed' edition, 1891–92) — 1891 (1891–92) · David McKayThe final authorized arrangement Whitman approved (the 'Deathbed edition'), David McKay, Philadelphia. Points: cancel title page dated 1891-'2 (the contents leaf is also a cancel); the 'A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads' essay and the 'Sands at Seventy' and 'Good-Bye My Fancy' annexes; and Whitman's printed note affirming this as the authoritative text. Plain dark green cloth, spine lettered in gilt with…. This is the authoritative final-text issue, distinct from the many earlier editions and collected as Whitman's definitive arrangement. It was printed from the plates of the 1889 setting with annexes; verify the 1891-'2 cancel title page and the affirming note. Later McKay and other-publisher printings reuse the text; the genuine deathbed issue has the 1891-'2 cancel title page, the dark green cloth, and Whitman's affirming note.
More Literary Fiction (US) & Award Winners shelves: Walter Scott, Washington Irving, Wilkie Collins, Will Self, Willa Cather, William Carlos Williams.
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