I heard that you ask'd for something to prove this puzzle the New World, And to define America, her athletic Democracy, Therefore I send you my poems that you behold in them what you wanted.

Walt Whitman's seminal, epic work of literature Leaves of Grass is a passionate, beautiful, vivid and emotional journey through the psychology and physicality of one man and the country in which he was born. It includes love poetry, war poetry, verses of happiness and exuberance, verses of sadness and old age, as well as elegies and songs. It spans the whole range of human emotion and human existence, from man's expulsion from the Garden of Eden to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Criticized on its first publication for its frank and shocking depiction of sex, and for its unusual and innovative poetical style, Whitman's masterpiece is now seen as the greatest collection of poetry ever produced in America.

Walt Whitman was born on Long Island in 1819 - the second of nine children. His formal education was brief, and at the age of eleven he began work as an office boy, quickly becoming apprenticed to various printing firms. He would remain employed in different aspects of printing and publication throughout most of his adult life, working as a journalist and editor on such publications as the Long- Islander, The Evening Tattler and The New York Democrat. He began to write poetry and fiction in the early 1840s, and achieved his first success with the novel Franklin Evans. Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855, and from thereon Whitman's literary output was devoted to compiling new editions of the collection, which grew prodigiously in size over the six versions which were printed during his lifetime. Ill-health dogged him through his later years, and he died at the age of 72.