Walt Whitman by Bartlett F. Kenney, 1881

In 1881, James R. Osgood and Company, a respected Boston publisher, agreed to issue a new edition of Leaves of Grass. On August 19, Whitman arrived in Boston and, over the next two months, oversaw the typesetting of the book at the Rand and Avery printing office. Everything about the book emphasized Whitman’s increasingly conservative stance, and many of the sexual passages were significantly toned down. During this period, Whitman sat for a series of photographs—which he would later dismiss as “pompous”—with photographer Bartlett F. Kenney at 870 Boylston Street. The session may have originally been intended to produce a frontispiece for the new edition, but the book eventually appeared in November without one.

Initial sales of the Osgood edition were strong, and reviews were almost universally positive. Ironically, on March 1, 1882, the District Attorney of Boston declared the book “obscene” and ordered passages to be expurgated or the book would be forbidden from public sale. Whitman initially agreed to consider changes but soon became so frustrated with the long list that he refused. Osgood discontinued the title but handed the stereotype plates over to Whitman who used them for numerous subsequent printings. The air of respectability forever punctured, Whitman had little use for the Kenney photographs ever again

For more information on Bartlett F. Kenney, see "Notes on Whitman's Photographers."