by Walt Whitman

LEAVES OF GRASS, Whitman’s monumental and enormously influential book, was his life’s work, going through nine different editions from its first publication in 1855 to the famous "deathbed edition" published the year he died (1892). Influenced by Eastern religions, his years as a journalist, the Civil War, 19th-century expansionism, Nature, the theater and opera, and his own liberal sexual attitudes, LEAVES OF GRASS is both a document set firmly in its time and a great transcendent work of art. It is also one of the most popular and accessible books of poems ever written, beloved since its first publication.