When Walt Whitman published a collection of poems entitled "Leaves of Grass" in 1855, he was an unknown journalist from Long Island. His poetry broke new ground in its treatment of the individual, eroticism, mortality and the trauma of the Civil War and created an unfamiliar yet unabashedly American, voice for his country and his fellow people.

When Walt Whitman self-published a collection of 12 poems entitled Leaves of Grass in 1855, he was an unknown, but ambitious, journalist from Long Island - by the time of his death he was beginning to be recognised as one of the most distinctive poetic voices of the modern world. His poetry, which he continually revised and republished over the course of his life, broke new ground in its treatment of the individual, eroticism, mortality and the trauma of the Civil War and created a new, unfamiliar yet unabashedly American, voice for his country and his fellow people.