American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 1: Philip Freneau to Walt Whitman (First Printing)

New York: Library of America, 1993. First Printing. Hardcover. Near Fine/Near Fine. In nineteenth-century America, poetry was part of everyday life, as familiar as a hymn, a love song, a patriotic exhortation. 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.Unprecedented in its textual authority, the anthology includes newly researched biographical sketches of each poet, a year-by-year chronology of poets and poetry from 1800 to 1900, and extensive notes.Burgundy cloth. xxiii, 1,099pp., index. Bound in ribbon page marker. First Printing. Full refund if not satisfied.