Whitman's major work, Leaves of Grass, was first published on the fourth of July in
1855. He was thirty-six years old, not yet a published writer, and could not find any company
willing to take a chance on his unusual style. His experience in newspapers
allowed him to help publish his work himself, even setting up some of the type and
distributing the first edition. To get a decent start, Whitman even went so far as to
write complimentary unsigned reviews of his book which he had placed in the
newspapers- "An American bard at last! "- his own words of his first work, showing his
audacity to be well thought of. Whitman wrote only one book- Leaves of Grass- but he
took a lifetime to write it, and he saw his one book through many shapes. As
biographers have found, it is difficult to write the life of Whitman without writing
instead the life and times of his book. He was the kind of parent who lives his life
through his child, though he was unmarried and childless. As though in anticipation of
scholars and critics who would probe deeply into his private affairs, Whitman placed a
warning at the beginning of "Leaves of Grass". A little reflection will confirm Whitman's
point: "no man's life was ever captured and placed between the covers of a book ." As
Whitman suggests, the reader who would know his life must read his book, and even
there he will find only a "few diffused faint 'clews'". No longer a journalist, no longer a
carpenter, Whitman was during this period in the process of establishing his identity,
not only for the public and posterity, but for himself.
As first published, Leaves of Grass was a large book encased by green covers with an
ornate, leafy design. It included twelve poems- "Song of Myself," "A Song for
Occupations," "To Think of Time," "The Sleepers," "I Sing the Body Electric," "Faces,"
"Son of the Answerer," "Europe," "A Bosto...