Leaves of Grass by Whitman, Walt - 1880

Boston: Thayer and Eldridge; Richard Worthington pirated edition, 1880?, 1880. Third edition. Hardcover. Very good condition. A Worthington piracy of the 1860 third edition variant of Leaves of Grass, with the frontispiece portrait of Whitman (an engraving by Stephen Alonzo Schoff from an oil painting portrait by Charles Hine). Dated on the title page of the third edition ("Year 85 of the States"). The poems are arranged in 7 "clusters": Chants Democratic and Native American, with an introductory poem "Apostrophe"; Leaves of Grass; Enfans d'Adam; Calamus; Messenger Leaves; Thoughts; Says; Debris; and 26 individual poems including Walt Whitman, A Word Out of the Sea (later titled Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking). The volume commences with Proto-Leaf, which was later called "Starting from Paumanok". According to the Walt Whitman archive, this is the edition in which Whitman introduced clusters celebrating homosexual love: "Enfans d'Adam," which would become "Children of Adam," and "Calamus," the controversial clusters celebrating heterosexual and homosexual love" 8vo, iv, 456pp. Maroon textured gilt cloth, beveled edges, blind stamped with a butterfly and the author's name on the spine; and the title and a design on the front and back boards. Spine tips expertly restored. According to BAL 21397, the copies lacking the printer's and stereotyper's imprints (as in this copy) on the copyright page were probably published after 1879. Bright, clean copy.