Whitman: The Poet-Liberator of Woman.
The Feminist’s Walt Whitman
Irwin, Mabel MacCoy. Whitman: The Poet-Liberator of Woman. 14 West 104th Street, New York: Published by the Author, 1905.
8vo.; frontispiece illustration of Whitman by Julia Greene, original tissue guard present; laid paper, fresh and bright but for light offstaining to two pages; grey cloth, front cover handsomely stamped in green and gilt with botanical motif, spine stamped in gilt; a pretty copy of a scarce volume.
First edition, limited, one of five hundred copies signed by the author (this is copy #29).
A very uncommon self-published work extolling Walt Whitman’s virtues as a feminist author, based on a close reading of his writings, which do strive for a universal humanism transcending gender. While many modern scholars have made the case for Whitman as a proto-feminist, this was one of the earliest works to do so, and certainly the earliest in book form. Chapters include: “Woman’s Subordination;” “Generic Man;” “Whitman’s Estimate of Woman;” “Whitman Celebrates Two Great Loves;” “Women’s Misunderstanding of Whitman;” and others. A pivotal
piece of early feminist Whitman criticism, and one still used in scholarly contexts today.
(#4216)
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