Printers of the Kosmos

Matt Cohen,Nicole Gray

doi:10.14434/tc.v14i2.33655

Abstract

This essay describes the editorial logic behind a recently released variorum of the 1855 edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The history of the composition, printing, binding, distribution, and reading of this set of books informs the design and apparatus of the variorum, which attempts to represent something of the fundamental textual and material instability of the copies that make up the edition.

Highlights

When Walt Whitman took a mind to self-publish a radically new book of poems, he turned to an old, familiar model: Shakespeare
Perhaps Rome insisted on a larger size for the pages of the book to better accommodate the work of printing Leaves of Grass between other jobs; perhaps, with all the blank space poetry would require, the format was a function of how much type Rome could summon to the form
Whatever combination of authorial intention foiled by the forces of economy or concurrent production the decision involved, at some point it became clear that the book was going to be big

Summary

Introduction

When Walt Whitman took a mind to self-publish a radically new book of poems, he turned to an old, familiar model: Shakespeare. Some copies of the 1855 Leaves include eight pages of essays and reviews, three self-authored, that Whitman had printed and bound into several of the books.

Results

Conclusion