Leaves of grass; Two rivulets & photograph signed

Camden, NJ: [n.p.], 1876. AUTHORS' EDITION, FIRST ISSUE OF RIVULETS. With albumen photograph of Whitman as frontispiece, signed by the author on the photograph (his name and born May 31, 1918), and signed on the original yellow fly-leaf "Roden Noel, from the author." Two works offered together, uniformly bound by Bayntun in polished green calf, gilt-ruled covers, gilt spine with 2 spine labels. Both in exquisite condition, from the library of Louis E. Goodman with his bookplate in each volume. TWO WORKS SIGNED BY WHITMAN. The author's edition. Six hundred copies of Leaves of grass were printed, most of which were signed by Whitman on the title page. This is the first edition, first issue of Two rivulets; the first printing consisted of only one hundred copies, and can be distinguished by the blank leaf in between As a strong bird on pinions free and Memoranda during the war. "On 2 May 1875, Whitman announced: 'I shall bring out a volume this summer, partly as my own contribution to our National Centennial. It is to be called Two Rivulets -- (i.e. two flowing chains of prose and verse, emanating the real and ideal)[.] It will embody much that I had previously written & that you know, but about one-third, as I guess, that is fresh'" (Myerson, 196). The book contains Two Rivulets, Democratic Vistas, Centennial Songs-1876, As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free, Memoranda During the War and Passage to India.

Roden Noel (1834-94) was a well-known English poet. The son of Noël, Lord Barham, afterwards Earl of Gainsborough, he was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained his M.A. in 1858. He then spent two years traveling in the East. In 1863, he married Alice de Bro, daughter of the director of the Ottoman Bank in Beirut. Their third child, Eric, who died aged five, is commemorated in Roden Noël's best-known book of verse, A Little Child's Monument (1881).