Walt Whitman was born in 1819, and from an early age evinced an intense curiosity and wonder in the miracle of Existence, and its ultimate meaning. In his collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, Whitman brings a new voice to America Literature - a voice that flouted many poetic conventions and covered a wide range of subjects, from freedom to slavery, war to peace, and (most controversial of all for its time) love and sexuality. According to Professor James E Miller, the book ..". seemed designed to shock and startle, surprise and disturb." And for most readers, Whitman's masterpiece succeeds in doing just that.

Schmidgall, author of Walt Whitman: A Gay Life and several other studies, delivers an edition of Whitman that, at long last, lives up to the poet’s initial intentions. This new volume presents over 200 poems in their original form and chronology, thereby retrieving the candor and exuberance Whitman displayed in the creative and sexual prime of his life. Walt Whitman: Selected Poems 1855-1892 also includes the poet’s major prose discussions of his verse, his four elegies for Lincoln, his earliest poems, and many contemporary—and sometimes blistering—reviews of his fearless, explicit, and uncompromised work.

One of the great innovative figures in American letters, Walt Whitman created a daringly new kind of poetry that became a major force in world literature. Leaves Of Grass is his one book.  First published in 1855 with only twelve poems, it was greeted by Ralph Waldo Emerson as "the wonderful gift . . . the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed."  Over the course of Whitman's life, the book reappeared in many versions, expanded and transformed as the author's experiences and the nation's history changed and grew.  Whitman's ambition was to creates something uniquely American.  In that he succeeded.  His poems have been woven into the very fabric of the American character.  From his solemn masterpieces "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" to the joyous freedom of "Song of Myself," "I Sing the Body Electric," and "Song of the Open Road," Whitman's work lives on, an inspiration to the poets of later generations.