Editing Leaves of Grass (section)

=== {{Anchor|"Deathbed edition"|Deathbed edition}}Deathbed edition, 1892 ===
[[File:Whitman, Walt (1819-1892) - 1883 - Engraving.jpg|thumb|[[Book frontispiece|Frontispiece]] engraving created in 1883]]
As 1891 came to a close, Whitman prepared a final edition of ''Leaves of Grass''. By this time, he was wheelchair-bound, having suffered a series of [[strokes]] that left him partially paralyzed.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Whitman and Disability: An Introduction |last1=McLaughlin |first1=Don James |last2=Mullaney |first2=Clare |journal=Commonplace: The Journal of Early American Life |url=https://commonplace.online/article/whitman-disability-introduction/ |volume=19 |issue=1 |date=Spring 2019 |access-date=4 March 2025}}</ref> He wrote to a friend after finishing the final edition: "L. of G. ''at last complete'' — after 33 y'rs of hackling at it, all times & moods of my life, fair weather & foul, all parts of the land, and peace & war, young & old."{{sfn|Reynolds|1995|p=586}} This last version of ''Leaves of Grass'' was published in 1892 and is referred to as the 'deathbed edition'.<ref name="Miller36">{{harvnb|Miller|1962|p=36}}</ref> In January 1892, two months before Whitman's death, an announcement was published in the ''[[New York Herald]]'':

<blockquote>Walt Whitman wishes respectfully to notify the public that the book ''Leaves of Grass'', which he has been working on at great intervals and partially issued for the past thirty-five or forty years, is now completed, so to call it, and he would like this new 1892 edition to absolutely supersede all previous ones. Faulty as it is, he decides it as by far his special and entire self-chosen poetic utterance.{{sfn|Kaplan|1979|p=51}}</blockquote>

By 1892, ''Leaves of Grass'' had expanded from a small book of twelve poems to a hefty tome of almost 400 poems.<ref name="WDL" /> As the volume changed, so did the pictures that Whitman used to illustrate himself—the last edition depicts an older Whitman with a full beard and wearing a jacket.