Specimen Days in America

First issued in 1882, this prose miscellany gathers Whitman's notes on his years as a wound-dresser in Civil War hospitals, sketches of Washington and of later travel, and short nature pieces written after a stroke. He records soldiers' faces, the smell of the wards, Lincoln's presence in the city, then ferry rides, timber, birds, and a westward journey. The form is dated entries and brief essays rather than a continuous autobiography. The book is a commonplace book of war, landscape, and old age, not a collection of the Leaves of Grass poems and not a formal history of the war.

18 contemporary photographs and wood-engravings. Full pale grey cloth binding lithographed with a photograph in brown. Map endleaves. Page tops stained black. Green slipcase.