The Library of Stephen J. Farber

8vo. Portrait engraving. Original dark mustard cloth stamped in gilt (light darkening to extremes, some cockling to lower cover, front hinge starting). Provenance: Roger Sherman, American printer (ownership signature dated August 1882; manuscript notes on rear blank, initialed "RS").

THE PRINTER'S COPY of the seventh ("definitive") edition. Roger Sherman was one of the three principals of Sherman & Co., the printing house responsible for this edition. On the rear flyleaf, Sherman lambastes the book itself: "This book is a singular production ever to have attracted attention. There is nothing in it which has any of the elements of poetry. There are neither noble thoughts, fine language, imagination, versification, or rythm [sic]. The book is wholly course [sic], unpleasant, and objectless...If it necessary to teach men and women of the age that they should pay more attention to breeding their kind, this is for physicians, philosophers and sociologists. It is not for poets..."

First published in 1855, Leaves of Grass quickly became one of the most controversial works in American literature for its frank celebration of the human body and its unconventional treatment of sexuality. The controversy reached its height in 1882, when the Boston district attorney declared the work obscene under Massachusetts law and demanded that several passages be removed. Whitman refused to alter the text, prompting his Boston publisher to withdraw the edition. The resulting publicity transformed the suppression into a boon for Whitman, bringing national attention to the book and significantly increasing its sales.