Preface
Chapter 1 Life
Youth and literary apprenticeship (1819-1850)
The emergence of the poet (1851-1860)
The war and its aftermath (1861-1873)
The period of reflection and decline(1873-1892)
Chapter 2 Historical and cultural contexts
Democracy
The body
The land
The culture
Chapter 3 Poetry before the Civil War
1855: "Song of Myself"
Other poems dating from the 1855 Leaves of Grass
1856: poems of sexuality and the body
1856: poems of the earth
1856: "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"
1860: Sea-Drift poems
1860: gendered clusters -"Children of Adam" and "Calamus"
Chapter 4 Poetry after the Civil War
Elegiac poems
The emergence of the image
Minor poetic modes
Chapter 5 Prose works
The 1855 preface
Democratic Vistas
Specimen Days
Chapter 6 Critical reception
The first fifty years, 1855-1905
1905-1955
1955-2005
Notes
Further reading
Index
