Description

Large folio (14.5 inches) staple bound soft-cover. Prefatory introductory essay by Robert Hass. The poem itself runs to fifty-six pages and is a facsimile of the original version published in 1855 and reprinted here with permission of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania; the remaining sixteen pages of text [stapled albeit lad-in loose as a separate pamphlet] contains the indispensable ‘Lexicon for the Reading of “Song of Myself”‘ by Robert Hass and Paul Ebenkamp. First edition thus. The 1336 line poem was originally untitled in the 1855 first edition of Leaves of Grass, acquiring the title ‘The Poem of Walt Whitman’ in the second edition, published the following year. It was not until the issuance of the 1881 edition that it was given the title of ‘Song of Myself’. A clean, unread and like new copy of a fragile printing. As new.