One of the roughs

Whitman printed the first edition of Leaves of Grass without the author's name on the title page. He used an engraving of himself in laborer's clothes as the frontispiece. Known as "the carpenter," the image is an icon of the American poet as "one of the roughs," or Everyman. Subsequent editions of Leaves depicted different Whitmans, ever more sophisticated and venerable. The elderly Whitman in 1891 reverted to an image of a young and urbane self, taken in Boston when he was working on the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass.