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Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass

... Philadelphia: D. McKay, 1982, c. 1891.
Proof page with manuscript corrections.


St. Thomas University. The Library. Miami, Florida.

St. Thomas University was founded in 1961 as Biscayne College by the order of Augustinian Friars. The name changed in 1984 to honor its "roots." The University was the successor institution to the Universidad de Sante Tomas de Villaneuva, founded in Havana, Cuba, in 1946. Today, St. Thomas University is sponsored by the Archdiocese of Miami. The campus houses a main library with over 135,000 volumes as well as a law school library. Patent of Nobility, October 10th, 1737. Spanish manuscript, 39 pages, written on vellum.

This Royal Crown Grant or Patent of Nobility conferred the Orders of Knighthood on Don Juan Alphonse Guerra y Sandoval. The work is executed in an italic hand and rubricated throughout in four line double borders. Headlines and accentuated passages are also rubricated. Two-full page watercolors precede the text. The first is a coat-of-arms and shield of Sandoval upon a bright floral background of oak leaves and roses. It precedes a full- page title with a floral filigree in a symbolic eighteenth century motif containing within the center roundel the crown stamp and royal arms of Spain. At the end of the manuscript are the very elaborate signatures of Sandoval and the royal scribes, the King's Attorney's wax seal, and the Great Seal of Spain.

Walt Whitman Collection. The late Charles E. Feinberg of Miami Beach was an important donor to the St. Thomas University Library. Feinberg was the world's foremost collector of the American poet, Walt Whitman. His collection began at the age of seventeen when he purchased his first letter written by Walt Whitman for $7.50. Feinberg shared his collection with others, contributing material to hundreds of libraries throughout the United States. He donated over six hundred first editions of rare books, proof sheets, manuscripts, and photographs to the St. Thomas University Library during his lifetime.

Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass. Author's Edition. Camden, New Jersey: 1882. Author's autograph on title page. Manuscript inscription on title page: M. P. Biddle Xmas, 1886. On free front endpaper: To Maggie P[e]pper Van Reed Biddle. With Willie's love. X-mas 1886.

Walt Whitman, one of America's most widely read authors, was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, Long Island, New York. He died on March 22, 1892 in Camden, New Jersey. Leaves of Grass, stands today as a work of monumental importance in American literature. Few American authors are the subject of more inquiry, analysis, debate, and discussion.

Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman's Lecture. Death of Abraham Lincoln. Association Hall, Cor. Chestnut and Fifteenth, Philadelphia, Evening of April 15, 1880. (The 15th Anniversary of the Assasination)... Ticket.

This ticket entitled the bearer to attend a lecture by Walt Whitman entitled "Death of Abraham Lincoln," delivered at the Association Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the evening of April 15, 1880. This date marked the fifteenth anniversary of the assassination of President Lincoln. Whitman had delivered his first Lincoln lecture one year earlier, in New York.

Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass including Sands at Seventy, 1st annex; Good-bye My Fancy, 2nd annex to Leaves of Grass; A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads; and Portrait from Life. Philadelphia: D. McKay, 1892, c. 1891. Proof page of title page from Good-bye My Fancy with manuscript corrections by Walt Whitman.

This proof page was prepared by Whitman as the section- title for Good Bye My Fancy in the 1891-1892 Death Bed Edition of Leaves of Grass. Whitman clipped the 1891 imprint from the leaf and pasted it to the verso (obscuring the copyright notice) and the printed table of contents from a trimmed second leaf of the first edition of the work. The poet has also numbered the leaf in manuscript (405 on the recto, 406 on the verso), struck out the printed page numbers in the table of contents and replaced them in manuscript with the appropriate numbers for the new edition of Leaves of Grass, written and then deleted "copyright certificate" at the foot of the verse, and written directly beneath the mounted table of contents "copyright - Walt Whitman - 1891." All of these emendations appear as made in the "Death Bed" Leaves of Grass, with the exception of the copyright notice, which in the printed version appears on the recto of the leaf as "Copyright, 1891, by Walt Whitman."