Focusing on actual publications by Whitman rather than those about him, Joel Myerson’s painstakingly compiled supplement to his 1993 Walt Whitman: A Descriptive Bibliography (Oak Knoll, ISBN 0-82293-739-5) includes almost twenty years of newly discovered and updated materials that will be invaluable to Whitman scholars. The entries describe in detail the various forms of Whitman’s books, newspaper articles, broadsheets, reprints, translations, and so on. Myerson includes facsimiles of title pages as well as information on pagination, illustrations, dimensions, contents, publication history, typography, paper, binding, and dust jackets.  

 

The sections incorporate the following: all books and pamphlets written wholly by Whitman through 1892, the year of his death, and all editions and reprintings in English through 2009; all collected editions of Whitman’s writings through 2009; all miscellaneous collections of his writings through 2009; all books in which material by Whitman appears for the first time; all first American and English publications in newspapers and magazines of material by Whitman through 2009; all proof copies as well as circulars and broadsides of his poetry and prose published during his lifetime; prose and poetry by Whitman reprinted in books and pamphlets through 1892; separate publications of individual poems and prose works through 2009; and references to possible publications by Whitman that are not dealt with elsewhere in the bibliography. The volume is thoroughly indexed.

 

Based on evidence gathered from personal inspection of multiple copies of Whitman’s works in American, Canadian, British, and New Zealand libraries, Myerson’s Supplement exemplifies the highest standards of bibliographic research.

Joel Myerson is Carolina Distinguished Professor of American literature at the University of South Carolina. An authority on Transcendentalism and textual and bibliographical studies, he has written, edited, coauthored, or coedited some fifty books, including Whitman in His Own Time (Iowa paperback, 2000), Emerson in His Own Time (Iowa, 2003), and Fuller in Her Own Time (Iowa, 2008).

“Joel Myerson’s supplement to his 1993 descriptive bibliography of primary works is a valuable extension of the original book collector’s delight, all the way down to details about recent sales and acquisitions or the latest count of first editions. Students of Walt Whitman and his works will need to consult it for any number of reasons, including its tantalizing updates about the many twists and turns in the production of Leaves of Grass and the prose.”—Jerome Loving, author, Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself