Oxford World's Classics; Leaves of Grass/Walt Whitman

Whitman is today regarded as America's Homer or Dante, and his work the touchstone
for literary originality in the New World. In Leaves of Grass, he abandoned
the rules of traditional poetry - breaking the standard metred line, discarding
the obligatory rhyming scheme, and using the vernacular. Emily Dickinson condemned
his sexual and physiological allusions as `disgraceful', but Emerson saw the book
as the `most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed'.
A century later it is his judgement of this autobiographical vision of the vigour
of the American nation that has proved the more enduring. This is the most up-to-date
edition for student use, with full critical apparatus.

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