American Poetry ─ The Nineteenth Century: The Library of America Anthology

At last in a deluxe collector's edition boxed set, the most complete and authoritative anthology of 19th century American poetry ever published

From the lyrics of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson to folk ballads and moving spirituals, one of our nation's greatest cultural legacies is the distinctly American poetry that arose during the nineteenth century. Unprecedented in its comprehensive sweep and textual authority, and now presented for the first time in a deluxe two-volume boxed set, the Library of America's acclaimed anthology American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century reveals for the first time the full beauty and diversity of that tradition. The century's greatest poets are here in generous selections: Dickinson, Poe, Emerson, Melville, and Whitman. Alongside are the now-undervalued achievements of Whittier, Longfellow, Bryant, Lowell, and Holmes, as well as poems just finding full recognition: mystical sonnets by Jones Very, the Romantic fantasias of Maria Gowen Brooks, the modernist stirrings of Stephen Crane. Also here are American Indian poetry in nineteenth-century versions, a rich gathering of anonymous folk songs, and popular spirituals and hymns, like "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear." The anthology includes a newly researched biographical sketch of each poet and a year-by-year chronology of poets and poems from 1800 to 1900.

Distinguished poet and critic John Hollander (1929-2013), volume editor, was A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor of English at Yale University.