This introductory guide to Walt Whitman weaves together the writer's life with an examination of his works.

· An innovative introductory guide to Walt Whitman.

· Weaves together the writer's life with an examination of his works.

· Focuses especially on Whitman's evolving masterpiece Leaves of Grass.

· Examines the material conditions and products of Whitman's "scripted life", including his original manuscripts.

· Investigates Whitman's "life in print" - his belief that he could literally embody himself in his books.

· Linked to a large electronic archive of Whitman's work at www.whitmanarchive.org

Ed Folsom is Carver Professor of English at the University of Iowa. He is the editor of The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, co-director of the Walt Whitman Archive and the author or editor of five books on Whitman, including Walt Whitman's Native Representations (1994) and Whitman East and West (1992).

Kenneth M. Price is the Hillegass Professor of American Literature at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He is the co-director of the Walt Whitman archive, editor of Walt Whitman: The Contemporary Reviews, and author of Whitman and Tradition: The Poet in his Century (1990) and To Walt Whitman, America (2004).

Acknowledgments.

List of Abbreviations of Whitman's Works.

Introduction.

1 Growing up in the Age of Accelerating Print: Whitman as Printer, Journalist, Teacher, and Fiction Writer.

2 "Many Manuscript Doings and Undoings": The Road toward Leaves of Grass.

3 "I Was Chilled with the Cold Types and Cylinder and Wet Paper Between Us": The First and Second Editions of Leaves of Grass.

4 Intimate Script and the New American Bible: "Calamus" and the Making of the 1860 Leaves of Grass.

5 Blood-Stained Memoranda.

6 Reconstructing Leaves of Grass, Restructuring a Life.

7 Dying into Leaves.

Appendix: What Whitman Left Us.

References.

Index