First published in 1888, this volume contains a collection of Walt Whitman's work together with his famous essay “Democratic Vistas”. Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892) was an American essayist, poet, and journalist who was pivotal to the transition from transcendentalism to realism. His work was notably divisive and claimed by many to be obscene when first published, but he is now considered to be one of the most influential people in the American poetic canon and the “father of free verse”. “Democratic Vistas” is an 1871 classic work of comparative politics and letters within which condemns the greed and corruption Golden age and denounces American post-Civil War materialism. Contents include: “Democratic Vistas”, “My Hook and I”, “A Backward Glance on my own Road”, “Our Eminent Visitors (Past, Present, and Future”, “A Thought on Shakespeare”, What Lurks Behind Shakespeare's Historical Plays”, “Robert Burns as Poet and Person”, “A word About a Book”, “Five Thousand Poems”, “Notes Left Over”, etc. Other notable works by this author include: “Franklin Evans” (1842), “Life and Adventures of Jack Engle” (1852), and “Leaves of Grass” (1855). Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.