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The Pauline and Ozzy Fletcher Collection of Whitmaniana
Lot 125
FIRST EDITION OF WHITMAN'S "ESSENTIAL AMERICAN BOOK." WHITMAN, WALT. 1819-1892. Leaves of Grass. Brooklyn, New York: [Printed for the author], 1855.
21 November 2023, 10:00 EST
New YorkSold for US$39,720 inc. premium
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FIRST EDITION OF WHITMAN'S "ESSENTIAL AMERICAN BOOK."
WHITMAN, WALT. 1819-1892. Leaves of Grass. Brooklyn, New York: [Printed for the author], 1855.
4to (278 x 190 mm). Publisher's green cloth, title in gilt with sprouting leaf motif, with leaf and floral pattern in blind, designed by Whitman, remnants of original advertisements pasted to endpapers, closed tear and chipping to cloth at upper spine, chipping at lower spine end, crease, closed tears to title page, bifoliate leaf pp iii-vi detached, hinges cracked with some leaves sprung. Folding cloth chemise, morocco-backed custom cloth slipcase.
Provenance: Walter B. Smith (Liberty St, ink inscription); Pauline and Ozzy Fletcher (bookplate to chemise); sold to our consignor.
"I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion...."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
FIRST EDITION, FIRST BINDING, OF "AMERICA'S SECOND DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE" (PMM), first state of the portrait, second state of copyright (as usual), with "and" corrected to p IV, and the first state of p 49, line 2.
A revolution in world literature, Leaves of Grass celebrated the self and the spirit of democracy — uttering forth with a voice "transcendent and new," a stream-of-consciousness free verse, distinctly American. The poet of the American ideal, Whitman is "the greatest artist his nation has brought forth. Indeed, no comparable figure in the arts has emerged in the last 400 years in the Americas..." (Bloom, "Introduction to Leaves of Grass," New York, 2005, p xi).
According to Myerson, 795 copies of the first edition were bound: 337 in Binding "A" in June and July of 1855; 262 in Binding "B" in December, 1855 and January, 1856; and 196 copies in two other binding styles, becoming increasingly less elaborate as the reality of printing and binding costs set in. Significantly, this copy also contains the first state ("And the night is for you and me and all") of "the first known revision from the thousands Whitman was to make in Leaves of Grass over the following thirty-seven years" (Schmidgall, 1855: A Stop-press Revision, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 18, Summer, 2000). Beginning midway through the first printing, Whitman would continue adding and revising throughout his life. "As Leaves of Grass grew through its five subsequent editions into a hefty book of 389 poems (with the addition of the two annexes), it gained much in variety and complexity, but Whitman's distinctive voice was never stronger, his vision never clearer, and his design never more improvisational than in the twelve poems of the first edition" (Marki, from The Walt Whitman Encyclopedia, Garland, 1999).
A clean, complete copy, from the library of Ozzy Fletcher, an African-American war hero, who also amassed one of the great collections of Whitman over 60 years. BAL 21395; Grolier American 67; Myerson A2.I.a1 (Binding A); PMM 340.
4to (278 x 190 mm). Publisher's green cloth, title in gilt with sprouting leaf motif, with leaf and floral pattern in blind, designed by Whitman, remnants of original advertisements pasted to endpapers, closed tear and chipping to cloth at upper spine, chipping at lower spine end, crease, closed tears to title page, bifoliate leaf pp iii-vi detached, hinges cracked with some leaves sprung. Folding cloth chemise, morocco-backed custom cloth slipcase.
Provenance: Walter B. Smith (Liberty St, ink inscription); Pauline and Ozzy Fletcher (bookplate to chemise); sold to our consignor.
"I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion...."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
FIRST EDITION, FIRST BINDING, OF "AMERICA'S SECOND DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE" (PMM), first state of the portrait, second state of copyright (as usual), with "and" corrected to p IV, and the first state of p 49, line 2.
A revolution in world literature, Leaves of Grass celebrated the self and the spirit of democracy — uttering forth with a voice "transcendent and new," a stream-of-consciousness free verse, distinctly American. The poet of the American ideal, Whitman is "the greatest artist his nation has brought forth. Indeed, no comparable figure in the arts has emerged in the last 400 years in the Americas..." (Bloom, "Introduction to Leaves of Grass," New York, 2005, p xi).
According to Myerson, 795 copies of the first edition were bound: 337 in Binding "A" in June and July of 1855; 262 in Binding "B" in December, 1855 and January, 1856; and 196 copies in two other binding styles, becoming increasingly less elaborate as the reality of printing and binding costs set in. Significantly, this copy also contains the first state ("And the night is for you and me and all") of "the first known revision from the thousands Whitman was to make in Leaves of Grass over the following thirty-seven years" (Schmidgall, 1855: A Stop-press Revision, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 18, Summer, 2000). Beginning midway through the first printing, Whitman would continue adding and revising throughout his life. "As Leaves of Grass grew through its five subsequent editions into a hefty book of 389 poems (with the addition of the two annexes), it gained much in variety and complexity, but Whitman's distinctive voice was never stronger, his vision never clearer, and his design never more improvisational than in the twelve poems of the first edition" (Marki, from The Walt Whitman Encyclopedia, Garland, 1999).
A clean, complete copy, from the library of Ozzy Fletcher, an African-American war hero, who also amassed one of the great collections of Whitman over 60 years. BAL 21395; Grolier American 67; Myerson A2.I.a1 (Binding A); PMM 340.