Walt Whitman: Selected Poetry and Prose

by Walt Whitman

This compact edition offers a substantial selection of Whitman’s writing. Highlights include the full text of the 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass, the 1855 text of the poem later titled “Song of Myself,” the complete “Live Oak, with Moss” sequence, numerous selections from the 1881 edition of Leaves of Grass, and several samples of Whitman’s early and late prose. The appendices include nineteenth-century reviews of Leaves of Grass, a selection of illustrations showing Whitman’s design choices for various editions of the book, and numerous portraits of the author.



This volume is one of a number of editions that have been drawn from the pages of the acclaimed Broadview Anthology of American Literature. The series is designed to make selections from the anthology available in a format convenient for use in a wide variety of contexts; each edition features an introduction and explanatory footnotes, and is designed to meet the needs of today’s students.



This edition departs from most other editions in the series in one important respect—its format. The large page size of the edition facilitates the reading of Whitman’s long lines of verse.

200 pages, Paperback

Published April 5, 2024

About the author

Walter Whitman Jr. was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature. Whitman incorporated both transcendentalism and realism in his writings and is often called the father of free verse. His work was controversial in his time, particularly his 1855 poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described by some as obscene for its overt sensuality.
Whitman was born in Huntington on Long Island, and lived in Brooklyn as a child and through much of his career. At the age of 11, he left formal schooling to go to work. He worked as a journalist, a teacher, and a government clerk. Whitman's major poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, was financed with his own money and became well known. The work was an attempt to reach out to the common person with an American epic. Whitman continued expanding and revising Leaves of Grass until his death in 1892.
During the American Civil War, he went to Washington, D.C., and worked in hospitals caring for the wounded. His poetry often focused on both loss and healing. On the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman greatly admired, he authored two poems, "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", and gave a series of lectures on Lincoln. After suffering a stroke towards the end of his life, Whitman moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. When he died at the age of 72, his funeral was a public event.
Whitman's influence on poetry remains strong. Art historian Mary Berenson wrote, "You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do without him." Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman "America's poet... He is America."