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I found some more info on the various versions. I tried to find the text Tom recommended, but it's not available to buy on Sony. I know I could convert, but with poetry I didn't want the conversion to affect the formatting.
Maybe the rest of you already know, but the differences in versions can be very different. The first version Whitman published was around 100 pages while the final version he published was around 400, with the ones in between having various lengths between those two.
All the versions are still available but most of the "published" ones are either the first version (1855) or the last version (1891 "deathbed"). Hamlet53, the version you have, the 150th anniversary edition, is of the first edition. I looked at it online to consider getting it.
I went with the "deathbed" version but honestly, I'm not sure I picked the right one! It seems the deathbed version is what Whitman himself considered the complete "masterpiece" vision, while some literary critics see the first edition as the "truer" and "purer" version that started it all. Where it gets more confusing is that some of the more famous poems were apparently not in the first edition, and the poems that were in the first edition were revised and in places rewritten and reordered.
If I had the inclination I would've read them both to see the difference, but that's too much for me I think, especially when one version is so long already. So I'll go with the deathbed version to get the complete picture of it all and hope that even with its "bloating", as some call it, it'll still be a worthy edition to read.
A note - apparently if you're buying the ebook and it doesn't specify which version, it's probably the short 1855 version. The version I bought (the Bantam Classics one) noted that most editions will publish the shorter one just because it's shorter.
The version I have seems pretty well formatted, but there are no notes. I was disappointed, since the blurb in the ebook store said there would be.
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