Poets of America

1885. First Edition . STEDMAN, Edmund Clarence. Poets of America. Cambridge: Printed at the Riverside Press, 1885. Two volumes extended to six. Octavo, early 20th-century full crushed maroon morocco gilt, raised bands, watered silk endpapers, top edges gilt. $19,000.First edition, number 84 of 150 large paper copies, extra-illustrated with many engraved portraits and an extraordinary collection of autograph material from 54 different authors bound in. Very handsomely bound in full morocco-gilt by the Monastery Hill Bindery.This extra-illustrated set, assembled by a Mr. Blauvelt of Paterson, New Jersey, contains an extraordinary collection of autograph material that includes almost all of the major American writers of the latter part of the 19th century, including Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sarah Orne Jewett, William Cullen Bryant, George Washington Cable, Edward Everett, Horace Greeley, Julian Hawthorne, William Dean Howells, James Russell Lowell, S. Weir Mitchell, John Greenleaf Whittier, N. P. Willis, and the French writer Alexandre Dumas. Includes original signatures, letters, postcards, and notes. Stedman was one of the premiere literary critics and anthology editors of Victorian America; ""he brought an unusually thorough and conscientious scholarship to the task of editing, and through his numerous anthologies, as well as through his own writings, he exercised a great influence on the American culture of the period"" (DAB). Comes with two quarto copies of an index to and transcription of all of the autograph material, one copy bound in cloth, the other bound in full morocco similar to the rest of the set. A beautiful and extraordinary extra-illustrated set in fine condition, handsomely bound.