ABSTRACT
Walt Whitman is able to make explicit the project he has laid out in Democratic Vistas by first promoting Leaves of Grass, next using the British literary tradition to model the "gymnast's struggle", and finally making a push for the future of an internationalist American democracy. Whitman describes reprinting as the industrial support system for American feudalism that turns out a mass of identical, unfit voters. Whitman's negotiations with Ernest Rhys and the uniformity of the reprint library would mean a loss of agency regarding the book's design that Whitman begrudgingly accepted in order to target Whitman's British readership. Whitman and the Walter Scott Publishing Company struck up a formidable relationship through the work of their intermediary-editor Rhys. Whitman's emphasis on the influence of feudal literature suggests that it is worth expanding the critical vista of Whitman's essay beyond a nationalist frame. Within this transatlantic literary field, Whitman becomes more self-conscious of the role of books within the body politic.
