― vii ―
Contents
| Acknowledgments | ix | |
| Citation Note | xi | |
| Preface | xiii | |
| 1. | The Erotics of Youth | 1 |
| Family Faces | 3 | |
| Boarding at the Brentons | 24 | |
| A First Friendship | 30 | |
| 2. | Why Whitman Gave Up Fiction | 37 |
| 3. | Interleaf: From Walter to Walt | 56 |
| 4. | Faith in Sex: Leaves of Grass in 1855–56 | 81 |
| Twenty-Eight Young Men | 82 | |
| The Flesh and the Appetites | 97 | |
| The Twenty-Ninth Bather | 114 | |
― viii ― | ||
| 5. | The Politics of Love in the 1860 Leaves of Grass | 122 |
| Enfans d'Adam | 129 | |
| Calamus | 136 | |
| 6. | Whitman Unperturbed: The Civil War and After | 153 |
| 7. | “In Loftiest Spheres”: Whitman's Visionary Feminism | 172 |
| Notes | 195 | |
| Index | 245 | |
Illusrtration following page 80