Walt Whitman: The Contemporary Reviews

This volume, a significant contribution to the reception history of Leaves of Grass, Specimen Days, and other works, reproduces the full range of the contemporary reviews of Whitman's various books. Brash and iconoclastic, revered and reviled at various times, Whitman came in for an astonishing array of commentary ranging from sympathy to hostility. Reviews by William Dean Howells, Henry James, Oscar Wilde and (writing anonymously) Whitman himself, and a host of other writers clarify much about both the poet and nineteenth-century American culture.