Leaves of Grass. Author's Edition, with Portraits from Life [Presentation Copy to Henry King]

Camden, NJ: By the Author, 1876. The so-called "Author's Edition," actually the third printing of the fifth edition (600 copies). Second issue, with integral title leaf. Signed by Whitman in ink on title page; additionally inscribed in Whitman's hand on front free endpaper: "Henry King / from the author." Original cream leather spine and corners over marbled boards; bright yellow coated endpapers; 384,[3] + 1pp ads. Evidence of old professional strengthening to front and rear joints (external); leather spine and corners have darkened to tan, as usual; a few leaves with brief marginal tears, not affecting text. A generally clean, Very Good copy in the original binding. BAL 21412. MYERSON A.2.5.c.(2).

The Author's edition of Leaves of Grass was issued uniform with Two Rivulets in August, 1876, and the two titles were advertised for purchase separately or as a set. Many if not most copies were signed by Whitman on the title page, and it is not altogether uncommon to find copies with additional presentation inscriptions on the front endpaper. The current copy carries an obscure but pleasing association: it is inscribed to the Topeka, Kansas journalist Henry King, founder and editor of the Kansas Magazine which, though short-lived (1872-73) was one of the most ambitious western literary periodicals of its time. King's ambition was for his magazine to rival the Atlantic Monthly in both quality of content and popularity, but with an emphasis on the "New West;" to this end he solicited original contributions from leading midwestern writers, and especially writers from the Great Plains. One of the few eastern writers published by King was Whitman, whose poems "The Mystic Trumpeter" and "Virginia - The West" [Myerson E2517 & E2518] first appeared in its pages in February and March, respectively, of 1872; the magazine also published a pseudonymous prose piece, "Walt Whitman in Europe" [E2523], actually written by Whitman, in December of that year.

The oddity of Whitman's inclusion in a periodical primarily focused on writers (and audiences) from the prairies has been commented on by at least one critic: "...Whitman's inclusion suggests that King (if no one else) saw in him a cultural figure, both well-known and different enough from the mainstream literary establishment in the East to help the editor achieve his own goals of promoting literature and negotiating a specific literary and cultural identity distinct from that of cultural centers in the East" (see Vaness Steinroetter, "Walt Whitman in the Early Kansas Press;" Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains, Summer 2016, pp 182ff). After the failure of his literary journal, King would go on to become editor of the prominent midwestern news daily, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, but that Whitman chose to inscribe the current work to him suggests that he may have kept at least one foot in the literary world.