WHITMAN, Walt.
Leaves of Grass.
DEATHBED EDITION, Printing 2, Binding C (BAL 21441; Myerson A2.7.1.2). Philadelphia: David McKay Co., 22 South Ninth Street, 1891–'92.
Large octavo. 438 pp. Publisher's green cloth, the spine lettered in gilt with the title, "Complete 1892," and the author's name in facsimile autograph; top edge gilt, fore and bottom edges deckled. Steel-engraved frontispiece portrait of Whitman at age thirty-five, an inserted plate between pages 28 and 29, with the original tissue guard intact. Complete with the annexes: Sands at Seventy (1888, first annex), Good-Bye My Fancy (1891, second annex), A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads (1888), and Portrait from Life. Near fine: light wear at the extremities and light markings to the front cover; internally clean and unmarked.
The last word. The Deathbed Edition is, strictly speaking, not a new edition but an impression. What makes the book the trophy of Whitman collecting is not textual novelty but the imprimatur — this is the version Whitman signed off on at the end of his life and asked the world to take as the final form. Binding C, with the facsimile signature on the spine, is the most frequently encountered of the binding states.
SKU TO-2026-113
