Leaves of Grass

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James Osgood was successor to Ticknor and Reed, the Boston publisher that published Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow and other New England authors. This book is the "Suppressed Editi on," since Oliver Stevens, DA for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, suggested to Osgood in 1882 that the edition should be withdrawn from publicaton because of its alleged obscenity. When Whitman agreed to change phrases but refused to delete two entire poems (A Woman Waits for Me and Ode to a Common Prostitute) Osgood decided to stop circulation. After the book became famous for being banned in Boston, it was quickly taken up by David McKay of the firm Rees Welsh & Co. in Philadelphia. In the coming years Whitman continued to add poems to Leaves of Grass but with the Osgood-McKay edition, it had reached essentially its final form. Myerson 2.7.a1. Show more