-After All, Not to Create Only

In 1871, Whitman was invited to deliver a poem at the fortieth National Industrial Exposition of the American Institute in New York City. The poem was reprinted in various newspapers and then published as a small pamphlet titled After All, Not to Create Only by the Roberts Brothers firm of Boston. As would become his practice throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, Whitman included the poem in subsequent editions of Leaves of Grass as the book continued to expand.