To the Reader at the Entrance of Leaves of Grass

Whitman Archive Title: To the Reader at the Entrance of Leaves of Grass
Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00515
Repository: Catalog of the Literary Manuscripts in The Oscar Lion Collection of Walt Whitman, The New York Public Library
Date: 1860–1867
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 4 leaves, handwritten; printed
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Content: One of a series of draft introductions Whitman prepared for Leaves of Grass , but which were never printed during Whitman's lifetime. This particular introduction, composed entirely in verse, was reworked and revised multiple times. Though "To the Reader at the Entrance of Leaves of Grass" did not appear in print as a distinct and cohesive piece until collected by Clifton Joseph Furness in Walt Whitman's Workshop (1928), portions of this draft were distilled into "One's-self I Sing," first published as "Inscription" in the 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass . Whitman revised this poem before including it as "One's-self I Sing" in 1871, dropping some of the lines only to reintroduce them in "Sands at Seventy" (1888), under the title "Small the Theme of My Chant." Both "One's-self I Sing" and "Small the Theme of My Chant" appeared in the 1892 edition of Leaves of Grass . Lines from this manuscript were also revised and used in the poem, "So Long!," which first appeared in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass .