Walt Whitman established his reputation as a poet in the late 1850s to early 1860s with the 1855 release of Leaves of Grass. Whitman intended to write a distinctly American epic and developed a free verse style inspired by the cadences of the King James Bible. The brief volume, first released in 1855, was considered controversial by some, with critics particularly objecting to Whitman's blunt depictions of sexuality and the poem's "homoerotic overtones". Whitman's work received significant attention following praise for Leaves of Grass by American transcendentalist lecturer and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson.