The University of Iowa Press will release "Leaves of Grass, 1860: The 150th Anniversary Facsimile Edition" this autumn in honor of the 150th Anniversary of the collection's publication. This anniversary edition will include not only a facsimile reproduction of the original 1860 volume but also an introduction by antebellum historian and Whitman scholar Jason Stacy -- a faculty member at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville -- that situates Whitman in 19th-century America as well as annotations that provide detailed historical context for Whitman's poems.

The book is part of the ongoing Iowa Whitman Series that celebrates and explores his influence on modern and contemporary writers in America and around the world. Robert Roper, author of "Now the Drum of War: Walt Whitman and His Brothers in the Civil War," wrote, "The University of Iowa Press continues its indispensable service to Whitman scholarship with this new edition of the 1860 'Leaves of Grass.' Jason Stacy refrains from calling the 1860 edition the greatest of all the editions that Whitman published in his lifetime, so we will have to do it for him: Those that came before were smaller, while those that came after represent fallings-away from this towering and encompassing enchantment, the greatest book yet from an American poet." read more...