Walt Whitman Self-Published Leaves of Grass
Quick answer: In 1855 Walt Whitman set the type for Leaves of Grass himself and published it with no author name on the cover. The original self-publishing success story.
No publisher asked for Leaves of Grass. In the early summer of 1855, a thirty-six-year-old Brooklyn ex-journalist and sometime carpenter walked into the printing shop of the Rome brothers on Cranberry Street and arranged to produce his own book of poems, reportedly setting a portion of the type with his own hands. The first printing ran to about 795 copies. The cover carried no author's name at all, only an engraving of a man in workman's clothes, shirt open, hat tilted, staring out at the buyer.
That green cloth volume is now one of the most valuable books in American literature, and the poems inside it changed poetry in English permanently. But in July 1855 it was simply an unsaleable oddity by a nobody, written in lines that did not rhyme, did not scan, and did not apologise. What Whitman did next, and kept doing for thirty-seven years, is the founding story of every writer who has ever decided not to wait for permission.
The poem
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
Walt Whitman, 'Song of Myself' (1855)
A book nobody would have printed for him
Whitman came to poetry sideways. He had been a printer's apprentice, a schoolteacher on Long Island, a newspaper editor fired from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle over politics, and a house-builder's assistant. The conventional verse he published in papers during the 1840s was forgettable, and he knew it. What he had been assembling in his notebooks was something else entirely: long, chanting, unrhymed lines that swallowed slang, opera, street noise and scripture whole.
No commercial house in 1855 was going to gamble on that. So he used the skills of his first trade. He arranged printing with friends, helped set type, designed the book, wrote its long prose preface, and even handled distribution, such as it was. Sales were negligible. Several copies he gave away came back, and one recipient reportedly threw his into the fire. Reviewers who noticed the book at all were often disgusted; the critic Rufus Griswold called it, in print, a 'mass of stupid filth'.
The letter that changed everything
Whitman mailed a copy to Ralph Waldo Emerson, the most influential literary mind in America, a man he had never met. Emerson read it and wrote back a private letter of astonished praise in July 1855, calling the book the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America had yet contributed, and adding the sentence every unknown writer has wanted to receive since: "I greet you at the beginning of a great career."
What Whitman did with that letter tells you who he was. He gave it to the New York Tribune, which printed it without Emerson's permission, and when the second edition of Leaves of Grass appeared in 1856 he stamped "I greet you at the beginning of a great career" in gold on the spine, an act of promotional cheek that scandalised Boston and would raise eyebrows even now. He also wrote anonymous rave reviews of his own book, a documented fact his admirers have had to live with ever since. Whitman believed in the work absolutely, and he was prepared to be shameless on its behalf because nobody else yet would be.
One book, revised for a lifetime
Here is the part the famous anecdote usually leaves out: 1855 was not a launch, it was a beginning. Whitman never really wrote another book; he rewrote this one. Leaves of Grass grew through edition after edition, from twelve poems in 1855 to hundreds by the so-called deathbed edition of 1891-92, absorbing the Civil War, his years volunteering in Washington's military hospitals, and his old age. The twelve untitled poems of the first edition acquired names; 'Song of Myself' kept expanding and contracting under his hands for decades.
The world resisted for a long time. In 1865 he was dismissed from his clerkship at the Department of the Interior after the Secretary, James Harlan, reportedly found Leaves of Grass indecent, and an 1882 Boston edition was withdrawn under threat of prosecution. The scandal, as scandals do, sold copies. By his last years the Camden sage had disciples, transatlantic fame, and a funeral attended by crowds. It had taken nearly four decades of stubbornness, and it started with a print run he paid for himself.
Why self-publishing worked for Whitman
It is worth being precise about this, because the moral is not 'self-publish and greatness follows'. Whitman's gamble worked for three reasons. First, the work was genuinely new; there was no gatekeeper qualified to approve it, so bypassing gatekeepers cost him nothing. Second, he possessed the production skills, from typesetting to publicity, to make a real book rather than a pile of pages. Third, he put the book directly into the hands of the one reader whose opinion could move the culture, and he was lucky that Emerson answered. Persistence built the machine; that letter was the spark, and luck deserves its honest credit.
Notice also what he did not do. He did not print the book and wait. Every edition was pushed, defended, revised and resubmitted to the public. Whitman treated publication as a verb with no final tense, which is the working difference between writers who are read and writers who are merely printed. A poet today has cheaper presses and faster mail, but the job is unchanged: finish the work, put it where readers and judges can actually see it, and keep doing so on a schedule, which is exactly the rhythm a monthly contest like Writory's, open the 1st to the 25th with every entry scored, is built to train.
What to read, and what to steal
Start with 'Song of Myself' in the 1855 or 1892 text, reading it aloud, since the poem is scored for breath rather than for the page. Then 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry', his great poem of standing in a crowd and speaking directly to readers not yet born, and 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd', the Lincoln elegy. The 1855 preface remains one of the best manifestos on what a poet owes their country and their senses.
What a working poet can steal is his line: the way it expands to hold catalogues of ordinary things and then snaps shut on a short declarative. Free verse did not begin as formlessness; Whitman's lines have rhetorical architecture, anaphora, and a preacher's cadence. Copy out twenty lines by hand and the engineering becomes obvious.
What poets can take from this
- If the gatekeepers cannot categorise your work, consider whether they are the wrong gate rather than whether you are the wrong writer.
- Learn one production skill, layout, editing or publicity, so your work never stalls waiting for someone else's craft.
- Send your book to the one reader whose opinion could change its fate; the worst outcome is silence, which you already have.
- Treat publication as the start of a poem's life and keep revising, resubmitting and re-releasing.
- Champion your own work without apology, but keep the claims about the work, not about yourself.
- Read your drafts aloud; Whitman's line teaches that the ear catches what the eye forgives.
Try it yourself
Write a poem that catalogues everything you can see from your front door in long, unrhymed lines, then end it with a single short line addressed to a reader a century from now.
Questions
Did Walt Whitman really typeset Leaves of Grass himself?
Partly, by most accounts. He arranged the 1855 printing at the Rome brothers' shop in Brooklyn and is reported to have set some of the type with his own hands, drawing on his training as a printer. He also designed the book, wrote its preface and handled its promotion.
How many copies of the first Leaves of Grass were printed?
The first 1855 printing is generally put at about 795 copies. Sales were extremely poor, and Whitman gave many copies away. Surviving first editions are now among the most sought-after books in American literature.
Was Leaves of Grass successful during Whitman's lifetime?
Slowly and unevenly. The book was attacked as indecent, cost him a government job in 1865, and saw an edition withdrawn in Boston in 1882 under threat of prosecution. But Emerson's early praise, decades of revised editions and Whitman's own tireless promotion built him real fame by his final years, and he died in 1892 a celebrated figure.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated September 2026.
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