Harry Ransom CenterThe University of Texas at Austin

Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855), signed by
the author. T.E. Hanley Library.

Most of the Whitman book and manuscript materials were acquired in the mid-1950s as part of the T.E. Hanley Library and supplemented by the 1959 purchase of over 500 volumes collected by John G. Moore.

Highlights include first editions of all of Whitman's works, including four copies of the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855): one of the four is signed by the author, and another is from the library of Oscar Wilde. A copy of the "Author's Edition" of Leaves of Grass (1876) contains an inscription by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and many manuscript notations by Whitman, and there is a particularly fine association copy of Specimen Days and Collect (1882-1883), with a long, intimate inscription by Whitman to his friend Peter Doyle.