American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 1: Philip Freneau to Walt Whitman

Library of America, October 1993. First Edition. Hardcover. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" Good / No Jacket. Item #005513986
ISBN: 0940450607

In Good condition in original blue cloth and publisher's slipcase (very slight wear to slipcase). (Page 331/332 badly crumpled with tear to bottom edge, text still legible). Otherwise a fine copy. // 'In nineteenth-century America, poetry was an integral part of everyday life. The two volumes of The Library of America's American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century reveal the vigor and diversity of a tradition embracing solitary visionaries and congenial storytellers, humorists and dissidents, songwriters and philosophers. These extraordinary anthologies reassess America's poetic legacy with a comprehensive sweep that no previous anthology has attempted. Extending chronologically from the classic couplets of Philip Freneau to the pioneering free verse of Walt Whitman, this first volume charts the formation of a distinctly American poetry. Here, in generous selections, are the major figures: Poe, Emerson, Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier--as well as such unexpected contributors as the landscape painter Thomas Cole, the actress Fanny Kemble, and the presidents John Quincy Adams and Abraham Lincoln. This collection offers the unique opportunity to appreciate anew such classics as Whittier's 'Snow-Bound,' Bryant's 'Forest Hymn,' and Emerson's 'Hamatreya,' while discovering a world of less familiar pleasures: the mystical sonnets of Jones Very, the Romantic fantasias of Maria Gowen Brooks, the stirring political poems of Joel Barlow and John Pierpont, and the somber and undervalued late lyrics of Longfellow.' -- publisher.

Price: $12.00