Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, 1860.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, 1860.

This copy of Leaves of Grass is open to the “Leaf of Faces,” which catalogs the many faces of America. The poem may be evidence of how Whitman's obsession with physiognomy (the pseudoscientific study of faces for evidence of character traits) entered into his poetic work.