Leaves of Grass

Printed in a Brooklyn job shop

Unable to secure a conventional publisher for an unusual group of poems, Whitman paid to produce the first edition himself in 1855. Copies were offered for sale in Brooklyn and New York in late June.

Andrew Rome printed the book in his Brooklyn job-printing shop with help from his younger brother Thomas. Whitman designed the volume and is believed to have set several of its pages of type himself.

Bibliographies often credit the "Rome Brothers," but a third brother, James, had died before the work was done.

Twelve untitled poems, ninety-five pages

The edition presented twelve untitled poems and a preface across 95 pages. No author appeared on the title page, although Whitman's name was in the copyright notice and Samuel Hollyer's engraved portrait served as the frontispiece — facing the title page, not on the cover.

It was a thin but large volume, roughly 29 cm tall, closer to a magazine than to anything pocket-sized. Only 795 copies are documented as bound, in several different styles and states.

"Song of Myself" and "I Sing the Body Electric" are later titles; the versions printed here carried none.

The Fourth of July date is a tradition

July 4 is a symbolic release date rather than a documented one. The Whitman Archive says copies were on sale in late June, and the Library of Congress dates the first surviving announcement that the book was for sale to July 6.

Because the edition survives in multiple bindings, issues and states, any account of a single uniform release day can mislead. Ralph Waldo Emerson, sent a copy, answered with a celebrated letter dated July 21, 1855.