Preface
Chapter 1 Life
　Youth and literary apprenticeship (1819-1850)
　The emergence of the poet (1851-1860)
　The war and its aftermath (1861-1873)
　The period of reflection and decline(1873-1892)
Chapter 2 Historical and cultural contexts
　Democracy
　The body
　The land
　The culture
Chapter 3 Poetry before the Civil War
　1855: "Song of Myself"
　Other poems dating from the 1855 Leaves of Grass
　1856: poems of sexuality and the body
　1856: poems of the earth
　1856: "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"
　1860: Sea-Drift poems
　1860: gendered clusters -"Children of Adam" and "Calamus"
Chapter 4 Poetry after the Civil War
　Elegiac poems
　The emergence of the image
　Minor poetic modes
Chapter 5 Prose works
　The 1855 preface
　Democratic Vistas
　Specimen Days
Chapter 6 Critical reception
　The first fifty years, 1855-1905
　1905-1955
　1955-2005
　Notes
　Further reading
　Index