"Greenspan retraces Whitman's early life along tightly professional lines, stressing his activities as printer, journalist, editor, and popular author. He then provides illuminating commentary on the first three editions of Leaves of Grass in terms of Whitman's shifting attitudes toward the popular readership...a good number of the links he draws between Whitman and his culture are quite original and perceptive." ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance

• Preface; Part I. Whitman and the Conditions for Authorship in Nineteenth-century America: 1. Homage to the tenth muse; 2. The evolution of American literary culture, 1820–50; 3. Going forth into literary America; 4. 'I am a writer, for the press and otherwise'; Part II. Whitman, Leaves of Grass and the Reader: 5. Intentions and ambitions; 6. Whitman and the reader, 1855; 7. The public response; 8. Whitman and the reader, 1856; 9. 'Publish yourself of your own personality'; 10. 1860: 'year of meteors'; 11. Whitman and his readers through the century; Notes; Index.