Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$322.07 + shipping
Condition: Poor
Description: Whitman's first appearance in UK. Binding detached from text block. Front board nearly wholly detached from spine. Spine discoloured, boards rubbed and bumped. Text block loose and shaken. Odd patches of foxing throughout, and occasional ink notation including to title page, else pp generally clear and bright. Size: 12mo
Seller: Bookcase, Carlisle, United Kingdom
Price: US$431.50 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: First UK edition. Rebound in half leather. Frontispiece and tissue guard lightly stained along margins, spine heavily toned, edges rubbed. 1868 Half-Leather. xii, 403 pp. Green leather spine and corners, marbled boards, gilt titles and rules, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers, frontispiece portrait of Walt Whitman after a daguerreotype taken from the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. First UK appearance of Whitman's poem. Includes: Dedication and Prefatory Notice by Editor William Michael Rossetti; Preface to the First Edition of Leaves of Grass; Chants Democratic; Drum Taps; Walt Whitman; Leaves of Grass; Songs of Parting. "Walter 'Walt' Whitman (May 31, 1819 ? March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.
Seller: Yesterday's Muse, ABAA, ILAB, IOBA, Webster, NY, U.S.A.
Price: US$650.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Second issue of first UK edition of the poetry of Walt Whitman. Contemporary rebind in blue leather with pale green/blue paper. Corners are rubbed, spine edges are worn, spine is darkened to green, a few small marks on the spine. Original blue cloth binding is bound into the rear of the book, spine price of 7/6 indicates the second printing. Clean interior. Binding is not signed. There were changes made to the text by the editor, this is the only time the poet allowed changes, as it was the only way to get publication in the UK. All orders packed with care, independent bookseller since 2011
Seller: Ivy Ridge Books/Scott Cranin, Fayetteville, NY, U.S.A.
Price: US$675.00 + shipping
Description: BAL 21401. Binding B. with three sets of advertisements. First appearance of Whitman in England, no sequence established among the four binding styles noted from this edition of 1500 copies.
Seller: John R. Sanderson, Bookseller , Stockbridge, MA, U.S.A.
Price: US$850.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: FIRST ENGLISH EDITION of Whitman s poems. William Michael Rossetti s Poems by Walt Whitman was published in 1868 by John Camden Hotten, a controversial publisher who specialized in Americana, erotica, and avant-garde poetry. Hotten wanted to publish the first British edition of Whitman s poetry, but the close scrutiny he was under due to recent anti-pornography laws made a complete Leaves of Grass seem almost impossible. Whitman, confronted with a willing but cautious publisher, was forced to compromise if he wanted his poems to have a wider distribution in England. It was here that William Michael Rossetti, Pre-Raphaelite and member of the prominent family of poets Dante Gabriel and Christina whose name recognition alone would secure Whitman several high-profile readers, was a key player in turning Leaves of Grass into Poems by Walt Whitman. The belief was that a Rossetti edition would be the best means of paving the way for later publication of a complete Leaves of Grass. [T]he Saturday Review responded favorably to the Rossetti edition of Leaves of Grass, saying that the previous American editions which had made their way into England had been indescribably filthy while the new Poems was presented to the British public in a comely form (qtd. in Paley 28). The comely form in which Leaves of Grass was presented to British readers required removing about one-half of the poems from the American 1867 edition it was based on (including Song of Myself ), attaching explanatory footnotes to various poems, and deleting objectionable phrases from the original 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass which Rossetti included. In a twenty-seven page Prefatory Notice, Rossetti explains, among other things, his criteria for the inclusion and exclusion of Whitman s poems: My choice has proceeded upon two simple rules: first, to omit entirely every poem which could with any tolerable fairness be deemed offensive to the feelings of morals or propriety in this peculiarly nervous age; and, second, to include every remaining poem which appeared to me of conspicuous beauty or interest (Whitley, Walt Whitman Archive). A very handsome copy and scarce thus. Provenance: bookplate of American collector Emerson Chamberlin whose library was sold by Anderson Galleries in 1920. Frontispiece portrait of Whitman, a vignette from the Hollyer engraving. Original blue cloth. Near fine.
Seller: 19th Century Rare Book & Photograph Shop, Stevenson, MD, U.S.A.