Whitman is today regarded as America`s Homer or Dante, and his work the touchstone for literary originality in the New World. In "Leaves of Grass", he abandoned the rules of traditional poetry - breaking the standard metred line, discarding the obligatory rhyming scheme, and using the vernacular. Emily Dickinson condemned his sexual and physiological allusions as `disgraceful`, but Emerson saw the book as the `most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed`. A century later it is his judgement of this autobiographical vision of the vigour of the American nation that has proved the more enduring. This is the most up-to-date edition for student use, with full critical apparatus.