This book is part of the Everyman series which has been re-set with wide margins and easy-to-read type and includes a themed introduction, a chronology of the life and times of the author and a critical response. This is a collection of all of Whitman's poetry and his most important prose. Whitman deliberately cast himself as a barbarian, one of the roughs, so as to signal his rejection of elitism. His poetry is democratic, socially inclusive, sexually and emotionally daring, exploring not only the recesses of his world but also the recessses of his mind.