Several years in the making, McSweeney's presents a gorgeous cloth-bound, hardcover, two-book edition of Leaves of Grass, stuffed to the brim with a dazzling array of ephemera designed to deeply enhance readers' appreciation of Whitman's original masterpiece.
In addition to the original, full-length work (presented precisely as Whitman desired), readers will find a second volume filled with his notebook and manuscript pages--generously made available to us and to all by the Walt Whitman Archive--totaling 344 pages of handwriting, cross outs, substitutions, and notes to both himself and his publishers. These materials provide crucial insight into how this magnificent work was created and was considered and reconsidered over the years by its author.
Volume One The complete and unabridged 1891-2 deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass
Volume Two Hundreds of pages of scanned handwritten drafts, manuscripts, notes, and more, made by Whitman Early drafts of Song of Myself, A Prairie Sunset, I Am the Poet of Sin, and more Handwritten edits and instructions to printers Correspondence between Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson Pencil sketches, cover designs, and drawings by Whitman A host of previously unpublished and abandoned poems And much more