KETTELL, Samuel

Specimens of American Poetry, with Critical and Biographical Notices

Boston: S. G. Goodrich and Co., 1829. First Edition. First printing. 12mo (20.5cm). Three volumes in contemporary tan paper-covered boards, backed in brown muslin, titled on paper spine labels; plain endpapers; vol. I: xlviii,353pp; vol. II: x,408pp; vol. III: x,406pp. Untrimmed. Ex-library: with large, early bookplate of the Erasmus Hall school library to front boards, twentieth-century stamps to free endpapers in each volume, and nineteenth-century call number labels to spines. A straight set with general external wear, front joint on vol. I cracking, spine labels much chipped, perforation to cloth over spine on vol. I; internally clean with minor scattered foxing, outer margins of first two leaves of vol. I trimmed away, otherwise generally sound: Very Good.

The first comprehensive anthology of American poetry, excerpting a range of authors including Cotton Mather, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, William Ladd, Washington Irving, Lydia Sigourney, William C. Bryant, Longfellow, Nathaniel P. Willis, and J. G. Whittier. Includes a "Catalogue of American Poetry"—essentially an early bibliography, listing "all the poetical works of American origin which have come under notice in the course of this undertaking" (p.378). Famously present in this list is "Tamerlane, and other poems, by a Bostonian," i.e, Edgar Allan Poe. In the original boards, with large, likely contemporary bookplates engraved by Maverick. From the library at Erasmus Hall Academy, a high school established in Brooklyn in 1786. AMERICAN IMPRINTS 39194. BAL 3251. SABIN 37655.

Price: $850.00

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