In 1855 Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass, the work which defined him as one of America's most influential voices, and which he added to throughout his life. A collection of astonishing originality and intensity, it spoke of politics, sexual emancipation and what it meant to be an American. From the joyful Song of Myself' and I Sing the Body Electric' to the elegiac When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd', Whitman's art fuses oratory, journalism and song in a vivid celebration of humanity.