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The Importance of the American Elite Poets
The most popular poet in mid 19th century America was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. For Whitman to burst through with the language of the working man, with this demonic vernacular language, it was very, very urban. It was an immigrant language, a polyglot language, and so people just didn't know what to make of it. In terms of sales, the song of higher wath to buy longfellow was also published in 1855 and it shifted 50,000 copies in its first year. The suggestion of leaves of grass sell about 300, something like that.