The publication of "Leaves of Grass" in July 1855 was a landmark event in literary history. Ralph Waldo Emerson judged the book "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has yet contributed. " Nothing like the volume had ever appeared before. Everything about it - the unusual jacket and title page, the exuberant preface, the twelve free-flowing, untitled poems embracing every realm of experience - was new. The 1855 edition broke new ground in its relaxed style, which prefigured free verse; in its sexual candor; in its images of racial bonding and democratic togetherness; and in the intensity of its affirmation of the sanctity of the physical world.