Walt Whitman Was a Shameless Hustler — And That's Exactly the Point

When most people picture Walt Whitman, they see the gray-bearded sage of American poetry — the tender, visionary voice behind "Song of Myself" and "O Captain! My Captain!" What they don't see is the scrappy self-promoter who gamed the literary world of the 1850s with a boldness that would feel right at home in today's content-creator economy. In this episode, we pull back the curtain on the marketing machine behind one of the most celebrated books in American literary history: Leaves of Grass.

Whitman published the first edition in 1855 entirely on his own terms. There was no major publisher behind him, no established literary reputation to trade on. He set some of the type himself at a Brooklyn print shop and paid for the run out of his own pocket. The book had no au ...