Printed on laid paper and bound in limp suede, this Roycrofters edition of Whitman’s poem ‘Song of Myself’ is a typical production of the Arts and Crafts movement of the early 20th century.
The text is that of the 1881 edition of Leaves of Grass, in which many of Whitman’s major poems took their final form.
This English edition of selections from Whitman was edited by Ernest Rhys (1859-1946) for ‘The Canterbury Poets’ series. Rhys was an English Whitman enthusiast who later edited the Dent’s Everyman series. The source of Rhys’ selection was the 1881 American edition.
The displayed copy, an eighth (English) edition, was the third Whitman book purchased by W.H. Trimble. It is open at the poem ‘On the Beach at Night Alone’, a revision of ‘Clef Poem’ (1856 second edition) and ‘Leaves of Grass, No. 12’ (1860 third edition).
Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass: The Poems of Walt Whitman. London; Newcastle: Walter Scott, 1886.
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This book of vari-coloured woodcuts and text selections by Antonio Frasconi was completed in 1969 in celebration of Whitman’s 150th birthday.
The lines are from the poem known in later editions of Leaves of Grass as ‘Youth, Day, Old Age and Night’. This poem first appeared in slightly different form in the 1855 first edition, as part of the poem beginning ‘Great are the myths.’
Overhead the Sun: Lines from Walt Whitman. Woodcuts by Antonio Frasconi. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969.
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