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In the summer of 1855 a Brooklyn printer and journalist paid for 795 copies of a thin green book of twelve untitled poems. His name was not on the cover or the title page; readers had only an engraved portrait of a bearded man in shirtsleeves, and, buried in the first poem, the line identifying him as “Walt Whitman, an American”. He spent the next 37 years rewriting that book. Leaves of Grass grew through new editions in 1856, 1860, 1867, 1871–72 and 1881–82, absorbed his Civil War poems and his elegies for Lincoln, was banned in Boston, and reached its final form in the “deathbed edition” of 1891–92, a few months before he died in Camden, New Jersey. Alongside it he wrote prose: an essay on democracy, notes from the war hospitals, an autobiography in fragments. This guide covers his twelve key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 1855–1891 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Walt Whitman’s life’s work is one book, Leaves of Grass, which he published in six distinct editions between 1855 and the deathbed edition of 1891–92. His other key books are Drum-Taps (1865), Democratic Vistas (1871), Memoranda During the War (1875), Specimen Days & Collect (1882) and November Boughs (1888). Start with the deathbed edition, the text he asked readers to treat as final; read on to see what changed from edition to edition.
Where to Start with Walt Whitman
If you want the poems as he left them
→ Leaves of Grass (1891) — the deathbed text most modern editions print.
If you want the poems as they first appeared
→ Leaves of Grass (1855) — twelve untitled poems and the 1855 preface.
If you want his Civil War poetry
→ Drum-Taps (1865) — including the two elegies for Lincoln.
If you want his prose
→ Specimen Days & Collect (1882) — the war hospitals and his own life, in short entries.
12 Walt Whitman Books, in Order
Leaves of Grass
Self-financed and printed by Andrew and James Rome in Brooklyn: 795 copies of a large, thin book bound in green cloth, with no author’s name on the cover or title page and an engraved frontispiece portrait of Whitman. It holds a long prose preface and twelve untitled poems; the first, later called “Song of Myself”, fills more than half the book. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote to Whitman calling it “the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed”.
Leaves of Grass
A smaller, pocket-sized book issued in August 1856 by Fowler and Wells, without their imprint, with about twenty new poems added to the original twelve, all now given titles. Without asking Emerson, Whitman printed a line from his private letter on the spine, “I greet you at the beginning of a great career”, and the full letter inside, together with reviews of the first edition.
Leaves of Grass
The first edition from a commercial publisher, Thayer and Eldridge of Boston, with more than a hundred new poems. It introduced the clusters that shaped every later edition, among them “Enfans d’Adam” (later “Children of Adam”), on sexual love between men and women, and “Calamus”, on love between men. It sold well, but the publisher went bankrupt, and its plates were used for unauthorised reprints into the 1880s.
Drum-Taps
Fifty-three poems of the Civil War, written after he went to Washington in December 1862 to find his wounded brother George and stayed on as a volunteer visitor in the army hospitals. The first copies were printed by Peter Eckler in April 1865, the month Lincoln was assassinated; in the autumn it was issued with an 18-poem Sequel containing his two elegies for Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” and “O Captain! My Captain!”. It also includes “Beat! Beat! Drums!” and “Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night”.
Leaves of Grass
Dated 1867 but on sale from the autumn of 1866, and the least successful edition: four separately paginated parts sewn together, with only six new poems in the main book and Drum-Taps, its Sequel and “Songs Before Parting” bound in as annexes. It was the first time the war poems, “O Captain! My Captain!” among them, appeared inside Leaves of Grass.
Democratic Vistas
A long prose essay written in the years after the Civil War and Lincoln’s death, built from magazine pieces of the late 1860s. Whitman argues that American democracy has succeeded politically and materially but not yet morally or culturally, and calls for a native literature equal to it. It later opened the Collect section of Specimen Days & Collect.
Leaves of Grass
Published by J. S. Redfield in New York, in some copies with Passage to India, a 75-poem supplement, bound in. The title poem celebrates the Suez Canal, the transcontinental railroad and the Atlantic cable. Here Whitman began moving the Civil War poems into Leaves of Grass proper, in three new clusters; the 1876 Centennial reissue added four poems.
Memoranda During the War
A short book of notes from his years in the Washington hospitals, issued privately from Camden, New Jersey, where he had moved after a paralytic stroke in 1873. It records individual soldiers, their wounds and deaths, and the scenes he saw in the wards and the city. Most of it was later absorbed into Specimen Days.
Leaves of Grass
Published in Boston in late 1881 by James R. Osgood, with the Passage to India poems brought back into the main book and the poems given the titles and order they still have. In 1882 the Boston district attorney, Oliver Stevens, warned that it broke the laws on obscene literature; Osgood asked for cuts to poems including “A Woman Waits for Me” and “To a Common Prostitute”, Whitman refused, and Osgood withdrew the book. Rees Welsh of Philadelphia, and then David McKay, reissued it, and sales rose sharply.
Specimen Days & Collect
Published by Rees Welsh in Philadelphia in 1882, months after the Boston withdrawal. Specimen Days is an autobiography in short dated entries: his family and Long Island childhood, Brooklyn and Manhattan, the Civil War hospitals, and his recovery in the countryside of New Jersey after the stroke. Collect gathers his other prose, opening with Democratic Vistas and ending with pieces from his youth.
November Boughs
A late collection published by David McKay in Philadelphia, combining the poems of “Sands at Seventy” with prose, including the essay “A Backward Glance O’er Travel’d Roads”, in which he looks back on what he had tried to do in Leaves of Grass. Both were then added as annexes to the book itself.
Leaves of Grass
The last edition, prepared by the bedridden Whitman in late 1891 and published by David McKay in Philadelphia: the 1881 arrangement essentially unchanged, with “Sands at Seventy” and “Good-Bye My Fancy” added as annexes, in 438 pages. Whitman wanted this to be the definitive text, and it is the one most modern editions of Leaves of Grass reprint. He died at home in Camden on 26 March 1892.
In What Order to Read Walt Whitman
Because Leaves of Grass is one book rewritten over 37 years, the real question is which edition. The deathbed edition of 1891–92 gives you every poem in the order and wording he finally chose. The 1855 edition, much shorter, shows the book as it first appeared: the poems untitled, “Song of Myself” in its earliest form, and a prose preface he later dropped. Many readers read the 1855 text alongside the final one.
The prose is best read after the poems. Specimen Days is the natural next step, because its Civil War entries are the background to Drum-Taps; Democratic Vistas sets out in argument the ideas the poems put in verse.
A reading path
1. Leaves of Grass, deathbed edition (1891–92)
2. Leaves of Grass, first edition (1855)
3. Drum-Taps (1865)
4. Specimen Days (1882)
5. Democratic Vistas (1871)
Everything Else Walt Whitman Published
Beyond the 12 key books: 5 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Fiction and journalism
3
3 books · 1842–1858
- 1842Franklin Evansa temperance novel he later called “damned rot”
- 1852Life and Adventures of Jack Englea New York novella serialised anonymously in six parts; rediscovered by Zachary Turpin and republished in 2017
- 1858Manly Health and Traininga newspaper series on health written as “Mose Velsor”; republished in 2016
Late books
2
2 books · 1891–1892
- 1891Good-Bye My Fancyhis last collection of poems and prose, added to the deathbed edition
- 1892Complete Prose Workshis prose gathered in one volume in the year he died
The years · 1819–1892
Quick facts about Walt Whitman
- Known for
- Walt Whitman is known for Leaves of Grass, the book of free verse he published in 1855 and kept revising until his death, which made him one of the founders of modern American poetry.
- 1819
- Born in West Hills, Long Island
- 1855
- Leaves of Grass
- 1862
- Starts visiting the army hospitals in Washington
- 1873
- Stroke; moves to Camden, New Jersey
- 1892
- Dies in Camden, aged 72
- Born
- 31 May 1819, West Hills, Huntington, Long Island, New York
- Died
- 26 March 1892, Camden, New Jersey; buried in his own tomb at Harleigh Cemetery
- Journalism
- Editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, 1846–1848
- Civil War
- Volunteer visitor in the Washington army hospitals from December 1862
- Government work
- Clerk at the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1865, dismissed by James Harlan, then the Attorney General’s office
- Home
- 328 Mickle Street, Camden, bought in 1884
The red mark is 1855: the first edition of Leaves of Grass, the book he rewrote for the rest of his life.
How Walt Whitman Writes: One Book, Rewritten for Life
Whitman wrote in long, unrhymed lines with no regular metre, held together by repetition: lists of people, places and trades, and lines that begin with the same word or phrase. In 1855 this was new to American poetry. The speaker of “Song of Myself” is both Whitman and everyone, which is why the poem can move from a runaway slave to a trapper’s wedding to a sea fight in a few pages.
He never treated a poem as finished. Between editions he retitled poems, moved them between clusters, cut lines and added new ones; the 1855 first poem had no title, became “Poem of Walt Whitman, an American” in 1856 and “Song of Myself” only in 1881. The Civil War changed the book most: the war poems went in as annexes in 1867 and were worked into Leaves of Grass itself from 1871.
His prose works the same ground plainly. Specimen Days is made of dated notes, many taken in the hospital wards, and Democratic Vistas argues directly for the democratic culture the poems imagine. Emerson, who first praised him, had called for exactly such an American poet in his essays.
Frequently asked questions about Walt Whitman’s books
How many books has Walt Whitman written?
His central work is a single book, Leaves of Grass, in six distinct editions (1855, 1856, 1860, 1867, 1871–72 and 1881–82, with the deathbed edition of 1891–92 as its final form). This page lists twelve key books: six editions of Leaves of Grass and six other books of poetry and prose. He also wrote a novel, Franklin Evans (1842), a novella, and late collections listed under “Everything else”.
What are Walt Whitman’s books in order?
Leaves of Grass (1855), Leaves of Grass (1856), Leaves of Grass (1860), Drum-Taps (1865), Leaves of Grass (1867), Democratic Vistas (1871), Leaves of Grass (1871–72), Memoranda During the War (1875), Leaves of Grass (1881–82), Specimen Days & Collect (1882), November Boughs (1888) and the deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass (1891–92).
Where should I start with Walt Whitman?
With the deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass (1891–92), the text he wanted to be final and the one most editions reprint. Begin with “Song of Myself”, then “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”.
What is Walt Whitman’s most famous book?
Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855. Its best-known poem is “Song of Myself”; his best-known short poem is “O Captain! My Captain!”, his 1865 elegy for Abraham Lincoln.
Which edition of Leaves of Grass should I read?
For the complete book as he left it, the deathbed edition of 1891–92. For the book as it first appeared, the 1855 edition: twelve poems, no titles, and the prose preface he later dropped. The 1860 edition is the one to look for if you want to see the “Calamus” and “Enfans d’Adam” poems as they first appeared.
Was Leaves of Grass banned?
In Boston, effectively, yes. In 1882 the district attorney, Oliver Stevens, pressed by the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice, warned the publisher James R. Osgood that the 1881 edition broke the state’s laws on obscene literature. Whitman refused the cuts Osgood asked for, and Osgood withdrew the book; it was reissued in Philadelphia and sold better than before. In 1865 the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, had dismissed Whitman from his government clerkship, possibly after finding an 1860 copy of the book.
Was Walt Whitman gay?
Biographers still debate it; he is usually described as homosexual or bisexual. The “Calamus” poems celebrate love between men, and Peter Doyle, a bus conductor he met in Washington around 1866, is often named as the love of his life. When the English writer John Addington Symonds asked him in 1890 whether “Calamus” was about homosexual love, Whitman denied it and claimed to have fathered six children, a claim never corroborated.
What were Walt Whitman’s views on slavery and race?
Mixed and debated. He opposed the extension of slavery and in 1856 wrote that the South must “abolish slavery or it will abolish you”, but he at first opposed the abolitionists and held prejudiced views, including that free African Americans should not vote. Scholars note that he never reconciled the country’s racism with the equality his poems celebrate.
What did Walt Whitman do in the Civil War?
In December 1862 he went to Virginia to find his brother George, who had been wounded at Fredericksburg, and then settled in Washington, where he spent years visiting wounded soldiers in the army hospitals. That work produced Drum-Taps (1865), Memoranda During the War (1875) and the war chapters of Specimen Days (1882).
Did Walt Whitman write novels?
Yes, early in his career. Franklin Evans (1842) is a temperance novel he later dismissed as “damned rot”. A second work of fiction, the novella Life and Adventures of Jack Engle, ran anonymously in a New York paper in 1852 and was identified as his by the graduate student Zachary Turpin, then republished in 2017.
Footnotes
- Walt Whitman — Wikipedia
- The Publishing History of Leaves of Grass — NINES
- Drum-Taps — Wikipedia
- Society for the Suppression of Vice — The Walt Whitman Archive
- Collect (1882) — The Walt Whitman Archive
- Grad student discovers a lost novel written by Walt Whitman — NPR, 2017
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
— Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”, Leaves of Grass (1891–92 text)
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