The Dirtiest Book in All the World Is the Expurgated Book

Walt Whitman? Horace Traubel? Morris L. Ernst? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Walt Whitman’s landmark poetry collection “Leaves of Grass” was shocking to some of his contemporaries, and he was told by publishers, critics, and attorneys that his work required expurgation. Whitman consented to this censorship initially, but he became increasingly unhappy and angry with this …