Video Fridays: Leaves of Grass

Coming to auction next week at Doyle is the library of Duncan Crawford, and one of its highlights is a first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in its exceptionally preserved first issue binding. Printed and bound by hand in Brooklyn in 1855, it is one of a small group of copies prepared by Whitman for the English market. It includes Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous letter to Whitman in which he wrote, "I greet you at the beginning of a great career."

In today’s “Video Friday,” Doyle’s Peter Costanzo offers a five-minute introduction to this copy, which hasn’t been seen at auction in more than sixty years. More on the sale here.