Image was made in 1887 in New York, by photographer George C. Cox.
Walt Whitman (George C. Cox, 1887)

The Obscenity Defense

April 06, 2007

When Leaves of Grass was deemed obscene in 1882, Mark Twain wrote a defense of Walt Whitman’s “noble work.” Now, Twain's essay is being published for the first time, in the Virginia Quarterly Review. University of Iowa professor Ed Folsom calls it classic Twain satire.

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