Walt Whitman New York: J.S. Redfield, 1871. Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

In Passage to India, the title track in this 1871 collection of his "songs," Whitman seeks to reconcile the newest achievements of Western science with the oldest truths of Eastern religion, the "myths Asiatic." The book is included here to represent the period's fascination with "Oriental" thought, especially Hinduism and Buddhism. Emerson, for example, whose own passage to India was by way of German Idealism and British Romanticism, owned one of the nation's best collections of Eastern writing. Thoreau made extensive use of it, and in Walden indicates one of its major attractions to him and others in his generation. "As for the sacred scriptures, or Bibles of mankind," he writes, "who in this town can tell me even their titles?" In Walden he quotes liberally from Confucius and Sheik Sadi of Shiraz, the Bhagavadgita, and the Harivansa, both for their spiritual wisdom and as a way to defy and transcend the bourgeois world of Concord. In the 1960s, the children of the American middle class would turn again to the East. Shown is a signed copy of the first edition.

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