Boston, 1860. Its title and globe are blind-stamped: pressed into the cloth, with no gilt and no ink, seen only as light crosses them. This copy was most likely printed from the 1860 plates in 1880 or after, by Richard Worthington of New York, Whitman refused Worthington’s offer for the plates in 1879 and forbade their use. In 1880 he asked Richard Watson Gilder whether he could “injunct Worthington or something?” He never went to court, and between 1880 and 1885 he accepted $143.50 in royalties on the printing’s sales, “on account, as royalty,” he said, without granting the right to print. In 1888 he called Worthington “a publisherial freebooter.”Read the full footnote.
Scroll to openFrontispiece · Title page
Stephen Alonzo Schoff’s engraving after Charles Hine’s portrait faces a title page lettered in flourishes: Boston, Thayer and Eldridge, “Year 85 of The States.”
Pages iv and 5
His emblem, a butterfly perched on a pointing finger, closes the contents. Facing it, Proto-Leaf, the book’s first poem: “Free, fresh, savage,”
