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"The First Copy Sold - One of 18 with a Cancel Leaf"

WHITMAN, WALT.

Leaves of Grass, Including Sands at Seventy, Good Bye My Fancy, Old Age Echoes, and A Backwards Glance O’er Travel’d Roads.

Place and Imprint: Boston: Small, Maynard, 1897.
Edition: First Small, Maynard edition of the complete Leaves of Grass.
Bibliographical References: BAL 21447; noted under Myerson B3.
Condition: Edges and cloth a little rubbed; some light foxing and creased edges; a few insect nibbles in the lower hinge; very good copy.
Book ID: 28800

Physical Description

8vo, original green cloth, gilt-decorated spine, gilt lettering, t.e.g., others untrimmed. Frontis portrait and one leaf of manuscript facsimile.

Comments

An interesting and uncommon edition of Leaves of Grass, which according to BAL contains the first appearance the 13 poems that comprise "Old Age Echoes" - though Myerson does not recognize that. And an interesting copy, as well: on the front free endpaper is written "First copy sold. (One of 18 with cancel leaf 'Good Bye My Fancy') / Herbert Small / Nov. 10." Herbert Small was one of the founders of Small Maynard in Boston, and Leaves of Grass was one of their first publications, the rights to which they acquired from Whitman's literary executors. This copy may well have been one of the first ones off the press as there is also a signature, comprising pages 343-358, in duplicate, which a contemporary reader noticed and marked. The matter of the cancel leaf "Good Bye My Fancy" is a possible reference to later issues having a hyphen between good and bye. Contemporary annotations in pencil in a few margins.

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