SECOND EDITION OF BURROUGHS' NOTES ON WALT WHITMAN, THIS COPY PRESENTED BY WHITMAN'S LITERARY EXECUTOR HORACE TRAUBEL TO WHITMAN'S PUBLISHER DAVID MCKAY

BURROUGHS, John. Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person. New York: Redfield, 1871. Octavo, original terra-cotta cloth. $950.

Second edition, inscribed by Horace Traubel to Whitman's publisher David McKay April 22, 1892, less than a month after the poet's death.

In this, the first book on Walt Whitman and Burroughs' first book, he "suggested that Leaves of Grass could not be compared to any other contemporary poetry. The Leaves were absolutely new, both in the theory of art upon which the poems were founded and in the ends that the poet had in mind. That the literary establishment disliked Whitman was, wrote Burroughs, the best of signs. He warned against letting the literary standards of the nation be set by those far removed from the street, the tavern, the battlefield… Whitman became in Burroughs' mind the ultimate model individual— the embodiment of the Emersonian ideal of the unapologetic, self-defined man… In his later years, Burroughs was quite candid about the fact that substantial portions of Notes on Walt Whitman were read and revised by Whitman himself. The poet reviewed sections as they were completed, discussed drafts with Burroughs, and even wrote a section entitled `Standards of the Natural Universe.' Whitman also supplied the book's title, several chapter titles, and wrote a large collection of `Supplementary Notes' that would be appended to the second edition in 1871" (Renehan, 184-85). BAL's binding variant A, no sequence established. BAL 2136.

Endpapers darkened, light dampstains on front cover, modest wear to corners and spine ends. An intriguing association copy.