The Controversial Cover

Send us Fan MailHello - this is George Bartley - just wanted to let you know that starting with Episode 400, the name of this podcast will be changed from Celebrate Poe to Celebrate Creativity - this way, this podcast can really delve more into 19th century writers, as well as human creativity, and the use of AI in literary and historical research - a lot more fun than it might appear at first!   So don’t miss episode 400 of Celebrate Poe - oh, I mean - Celebrate Creativity.But as for now - Welcome to Celebrate Poe - episode 399 - The Controversial CoverThis episode is about the cover of the first edition of Walt Whitman's leaves of Grass - with one of the most controversial covers of its time - largely because of what it did not have. There was no picture on the front page of he book, just ornate an engraving of the title - leaves of grass. The book is a collection of 12 poems, and nothing like it had ever been published before. Let's talk to Mr. Whitman about that first edition.Mr. Whitman, I want to talk with you about the first edition of leaves of grass - in fact more to the point, it's original cover. First, mr. Whitman, could you simply explain what the cover and frontspace looked like?Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.