WHITMAN, Walt.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Leaves of Grass. William Erasmus Darwin's copy, with his bookplate. In this collection, published in Reconstruction-era America, Whitman includes Passage to India, in which he hoped to write with "the thread-voice, more or less audible, of an aggregated, inseparable, unprecedented, vast, composite, electric democratic nationality".William Erasmus Darwin was a banker, amateur photographer, and champion of university education. Charles Darwin called his son "a prodigy of beauty and intellect" (letter to W. D. Fox, 7 June 1840) and studied him as part of his research into infant psychology. This is the fifth edition, second printing, first issue. Whitman issued several rearrangements of this edition, perhaps frustrated by general public's lack of interest. This issue includes a Passage to India, but not After All, Not to Create Only.

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.