American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century
Volume One: Freneau to Whitman
Volume Two: Melville to Stickney, with American Indian Poetry, Folk Songs, and Spirituals
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, the two-volume 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.
Plus – FREE
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
Poems & Other Writings
Clothbound, slipcased edition | 850 pages
No nineteenth-century American writer was more universally enjoyed and admired than Longfellow. Here are poems that created an American mythology: Evangeline in the forest primeval, Hiawatha by the shores of Gitche Gumee, the midnight ride of Paul Revere, the wreck of the Hesperus, the village blacksmith, the courtship of Miles Standish, and many others. This volume also restores to print Longfellow’s under-appreciated novel, Kavanagh, and features numerous essays.
