First published in 1855 and continuously revised by Whitman throughout his life, Leaves of Grass is one of the most important works in American literary history. From the soaring democratic vision of “Song of Myself” to the elegiac “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” Whitman invented a new American voice — free-verse, body-affirming, all-embracing — that broke entirely with the European poetic tradition.
No American poet has had greater influence on the verse and prose that followed. Download the free public-domain EPUB at Better Gutenberg and read the book Emerson called “the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.”