Project Gutenberg's The Bibliography of Walt Whitman, by Frank Shay

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Bibliography of Walt Whitman

Author: Frank Shay

Release Date: March 25, 2010 [EBook #31781]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WALT WHITMAN ***

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Tamise Totterdell and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

The Whitman Bibliography

_This edition of the WHITMAN BIBLIOGRAPHY is limited to five hundred
numbered copies, of which this is No. 288_

[Illustration: Walt Whitman]

THE BIBLIOGRAPHY
OF WALT WHITMAN

BY FRANK SHAY

NEW YORK
FRIEDMANS'
1920

Copyright, 1920, by Friedmans'.

To the memory of
HORACE TRAUBEL
1856-1919
Poet, Philosopher, Comrade

FOREWORD

"_Camerado, this is no book;
Who touches this touches a man._"

Walt Whitman's relation to his work was more personal than that of most
poets. He was, in a larger sense, a man of one book, and this book,
issued and reissued at various periods of the poet's life, was, at each
issuance, the latest expression of his development. The infinite care he
gave to his work; the continual study of each poem resulted in changes
in each edition. The book literally grew with the man and in the present
authorized edition of today we have his final and complete utterance.

Whitman's early fugitive work presents to the student a curious anomaly.
It gives no intimation of the great nature that later produced Leaves of
Grass and Democratic Vistas. In quality it was beneath the standards of
the nickle-dreadfuls of yesterday. Bearing such titles as "One Wicked
Impulse"; "Revenge and Requital, Tale of a Murderer Escaped"; "The
Angel of Tears"; (many of them are in the Prose Works) they appealed to
a class to whom thought was anathema and reading solely a pastime. They
are didactic to the extreme, presenting the horrible results of sin and
the corresponding rewards of virtue. Their value as literature, however,
does not come within the province of the bibliographer.

The care Whitman besto