In the fifteen years before the publication of Leaves of Grass (1855) Walt Whitman constructed
three authoritative voices by which he engaged the upheavals endemic to the Industrial
Revolution. Through these public personas found mostly in his journalism Whitman offered
remedies for American artisans who had lost their economic autonomy and status. Instead of
attacking broad forces beyond worker control Whitman blamed artisans for oppressing themselves
through the temptations of consumerism and affectation. Walt Whitman's Multitudes places the
first edition of Leaves of Grass on par with Whitman's journalism and exposes a writer
different from most poetry-directed analyses. In doing so it traces Whitman's public voice as
he wrestled intimately with the debates of his day: conspicuous consumption nativism slavery
and through it all labor and the status of the new working class.
