Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$150.00 + shipping
Description: 12mo. [viii], 173 pp. Frontispiece (tanned). Green cloth binding, gilt lettering, spine rubbed, owner signature, else good condition. (88103). Edited with an Introduction by Richard Bucke M.D.
Seller: Bauer Rare Books, San Diego, CA, U.S.A.
Whitman, Walt. CALAMUS. Laurens Maynard, Boston, 1897.
Price: US$180.00 + shipping
Description: Small Octavo, viii, 173 pages; G+; green spine, gild text; boards strong, some shelfwear, general edgewear, rubbing on fore corners, spine edges and hinges, bumping on fore corners and spine head edge, spine sun toned, interior age toned; text block age toned, title page has some separation; MS consignment; NOTE: Shelved in Netdesk office, Case #2. 1293165. FP New Rockville Stock.
Seller: Second Story Books, ABAA, Rockville, MD, U.S.A.
Price: US$349.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: First American Issue of the only edition, with spine imprint Maynard and title page "Published by Laurens Maynard" (later Small, Maynard). Edited, with an introduction, by Richard Maurice Bucke, M.D., one of Whitman's literary executors. Small 8vo: viii,173pp, with two inserted leaves of Japan paper, one (frontispiece) with drawing by H. D. Young of Whitman and Peter Doyle on verso before title page, the other a photograph of a letter on recto after p. 112. Publisher's lime T-like cloth (bold ribbed), cover blind stamped with single rule frame, spine lettered in gilt. Pages marginally toned, frontispiece and facsimile letter browned, else an excellent example. BAL 21446. Myerson A14.I.b1. In the third edition of Leaves of Grass, published in 1860, Whitman's "Calamus" poems, a cluster devoted to male-male affection, make their first appearance (the edition on offer here is the first, 37 years later, in which the poems stand alone). The Calamus poems offer a vision of men loving men to counter the Civil War horror of fratricide that threatened the nation at a pivotal moment in its history. Their genesis is found in an unpublished manuscript sequence of twelve poems entitled "Live Oak With Moss," written in or before the spring of 1859. The poems seem to recount the story of a relationship between the speaker and a male lover. In the third edition of Leaves, Whitman included the twelve "Live Oak" poems along with others to form a sequence of 45 untitled poems that celebrate many aspects of "comradeship" or "adhesive love," Whitman's term, borrowed from phrenology, to describe male same-sex attraction in its political, spiritual, metaphysical, and personal phasesâ"in Whitman's view, the backbone of future nations, the root of religious sentiments, the solution to the big questions of life, and a source of personal anguish and joy. N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable polypropylene sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed.
Seller: Fine Editions Ltd, Lancaster, PA, U.S.A.
Price: US$1875.00 + shipping
Description: Original green cloth. Edited with an introduction by Richard Maurice Bucke, one of Whitman's literary executors. BAL 21446: Issue A; Meyerson A14.I.b1. Illustrated with a portrait of Whitman with Doyle and a facsimile of a Whitman letter. This book marks the first separate publication (outside of LEAVES OF GRASS) of Whitman's Calamus poems devoted to male romantic relationships. INSCRIBED and SIGNED by another of Whitman's literary executors, Thomas B. Harned, on 9 January 1898 to renowned author Mary Mapes Dodge, the recognized leader in juvenile literature for almost a third of the nineteenth century. For more than 30 years Dodge edited ST. NICHOLAS MAGAZINE, the primary magazine for children at the time. She also wrote the classic HANS BRINKER, OR THE SILVER SKATES. Pages a little toned, frontispiece and facsimile letter browned, as nearly always the case
Seller: Charles Agvent, est. 1987, ABAA, ILAB, Fleetwood, PA, U.S.A.
Price: US$12500.00 + shipping
Description: Small 8vo, illustrated with a frontispiece & a facsimile, original yellow-green cloth with blind-stamped covers. The usual discoloration of the illustrations and page margins, head of spine a trifle rubbed, otherwise a very good copy. The usual discoloration of the illustrations and page margins, head of spine a trifle rubbed, otherwise a very good copy First (trade) edition, first issue, following a limited edition of 35 large-paper copies, signed by Dr. Bucke, of which 25 were for sale. Myerson A14.1.b1. In addition to the letters by Whitman, who died in 1892, this book contains a very interesting interview with Peter Doyle, conducted by Bucke and Horace Traubel in 1895, in which "Mr. Doyle is reported almost absolutely in his own words." Presentation copy, inscribed at the top of the front free endpaper: "Patrick Dougherty With the regards of Pete Doyle". Walt Whitman's relationship with Peter Doyle was the deepest and the longest of his erotic-romantic relationships with younger men, the only such long-term relationship that Whitman ever enjoyed. It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of their relationship in either man's life. They met in 1865 and within a couple of years, Whitman's friends (e.g. William Douglas O'Connor) began to comment on how powerfully "changed" and "inspired" the poet was by his feelings for Doyle. Serious students of Whitman have never questioned Doyle's pre-eminent place in his life. In the early 1990s, for instance, an entire issue of the Walt Whitman Quarterly was devoted to Doyle. Not surprisingly, the relationship with Doyle was also the best-documented of the poet's love affairs - in letters both from the participants and from others in their circle, in Whitman's notebooks, in numerous first-hand accounts of visits and conversations with Whitman published by admirers during and after his lifetime and in Calamus itself - which is, incidentally, the first published collection of letters by an American man to a male lover. Reviewing Calamus in the April 16, 1898 issue of Literature, Henry James found that although Whitman's letters contained "not even by accident a line with a hint of style - it is all flat, familiar, affectionate, illiterate colloquy," somehow "the record [of ordinary events of the friends shared lives] remains, by a mysterious marvel, a thing positively delightful." James declared Doyle's spoken account of his first meeting with Whitman on the horsecars "the most charming passage in the volume." Manuscript material by Doyle, even his signature, is extremely rare. Although it is clear from their extant correspondence that Doyle wrote at least as many letters to Whitman as he received, well over a hundred of Whitman's letters to Doyle have survived, but very few of Doyle's. Myerson notes that "some copies" of the first limited issue were signed by Peter Doyle as well as by Bucke. Only two locations, however, are recorded: the New York Public Library and the University of Texas at Austin, suggesting that Doyle's signatures in the two copies were the result of happenstance rather than editorial design. Dr. Bucke's copy, for instance, was not signed by Doyle; indeed, no copy of either the limited or trade editions of Calamus signed by Doyle are listed in Whitman At Auction 1899-1972 (Detroit: Gale Research, 1978), a compilation of the most significant sales of Whitman's work; nor has any other signed copy appeared at auction subsequently. Moreover, examination of all the published catalogues we have been able to locate of important private (and now institutionalized) Whitman collections - viz. those of Oscar Lion, Dr. & Mrs. Josiah Trent, Mrs. Frank Julian Sprague, and Charles E. Feinberg - has turned up no copies of a Calamus signed by Doyle, other than the two copies of the large-paper edition mentioned above. So far as we can determine, no other copy of Calamus inscribed by Doyle has ever appeared on the market.
Seller: James S. Jaffe Rare Books, LLC, ABAA, Deep River, CT, U.S.A.