Leaves of Grass
Whitman paid for the first edition himself, set some of the type, and published twelve untitled poems without naming their author on the title page. He then revised and expanded the book for the rest of his life, so Leaves of Grass is less a single volume than a forty-year project.
The long free-verse lines were startling in 1855 and remain the easiest way into his work. Start with Song of Myself and read it aloud; the catalogue passages are built for the breath rather than the eye.
Public-domain status
First published in 1855. In the United States, works published before 1930 are in the public domain. In the European Union the general term is the life of the author plus 70 years; Walt Whitman died in 1892, so this work has been free to republish there since 1963.
Read the text free
- Project Gutenberg, ebook no. 1322 — plain text, EPUB and Kindle, checked by us
- Internet Archive — scanned editions and free audiobooks
- Open Library — edition history and borrowable copies
Keep reading
- Moby-Dick — Herman Melville, 1851
- The Canterbury Tales — Geoffrey Chaucer, 1400
- Troilus and Criseyde — Geoffrey Chaucer, 1385
- Childe Harold's Pilgrimage — Lord Byron, 1812
- New York — the city behind the books
- Reading lists — 19 ways through the collection
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