Wednesday, Sep 01, 2021

Leaves of Grass was issued in November 1929 as the 2nd book published by the Limited Editions Club.

The text used for this edition, was a reproduction of the first edition, issued in Brooklyn by Walter Whitman in 1855.

This is one of the few LEC books released without illustrations, but with a portrait of Walter Whitman and introduced by Carolyn Wells a well known collector and authority on Whitman.

George Macy’s thoughts on Leaves of Grass as published in Quarto-Millenary:

“I made two serious mistakes in the planning of this book. The first was that I prepared an inadequate text; utterly ignorant of the bibliography of Walt Whitman, I welcomed a Whitmaniac’s suggestion that we reprint the rare first edition: now I wonder what service we rendered to anybody, in reprinting a text which contains so little of Leaves of Grass. The second was that I asked Federic Warde to design the book; and now I know that Fred was the man to translate Walt into type: the binding and the pages of type are very very pretty, and that is the trouble that the barbaric yawp of Walt Whitman is hushed by the meticulous, delicate, charming and inappropriate typography of Fred Warde.

One of our first dozen applications for membership had come to us from the well-known wife of the president of one of America’s largest banks. When she had Gulliver from us she wrote a heart-warming letter of thanks for its beauty. When she had Leaves of Grass, however, she wrote a bitter condemnation of us because the binding cloth proved to be green; she had liked Gulliver because it was in brown, only brown books would look pretty in her library, she would have to have her money back unless we agree to bind all of the books in brown. I sent her back greenbacks, and felt blue for days thereafter.”

Bound by George McKibbin & Son in full green cloth, printed in colors and gold-stamped. 212 pages, 7 ½ x 11 inches. Printed by The Printing House of William Edwin Rudge and set in lintype Estienne (first use in USA). Printed on Canson & Montgolfier Vidalon Verge paper. This book is #61 of 1500, signed by the designer Frederic Warde.

Reception to the book was mixed, many academics and Whitman collectors where quite taken by the book, but many of the more casual collectors felt somewhat cheated by the book and what their expectations were. Today it is a sought after collectable volume in the LEC range. So I believe the Academics and collectors won out eventually.