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Rating: 
Summary: The best...
Review: ...series of American poetry anthologies, easily. Almost a thousand pages of verse per volume, excellent selections, helpful biographies and notes. Volumes One and Two are better still as their contents were selected exclusively by the peerlessly tasteful John Hollander, who wisely gives about half the space to the half-dozen greats (Whitman, Dickinson, Emerson, Melville, Longfellow, Bryant). These are among the best volumes of the invaluable Library of America series. Volumes Three and Four, covering the early 20th Century, are also available here and superb. Read these four through and this year will be twice as rich as last year.
Rating:
Summary: The 19th Century, Vol. 1
Review: Volume 1 is a superb anthology of poetry, collecting poems from the works of dozens of poets, from Philip Freneau (1752-1832) to Walt Whitman (1819-1892). William Cullen Bryant, Maria Gowen Brooks, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Edgar Allan Poe, Christopher Pearse Cranch, James Russell Lowell, and Whitman are given the most space. There is astonishing variety in here, with ballads, songs, and excerpts from epics; Romantic poems, Transcendentalist poems, political poems, etc, etc. One wonderful thing about the Library of America's poetry anthologies is that they include something for just about every mood and every taste. Get this book: it will become a treasured part of your library.
Rating:
Summary: The 19th Century, Vol. 1
Review: Volume 1 is a superb anthology of poetry, collecting poems from the works of dozens of poets, from Philip Freneau (1752-1832) to Walt Whitman (1819-1892). William Cullen Bryant, Maria Gowen Brooks, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Edgar Allan Poe, Christopher Pearse Cranch, James Russell Lowell, and Whitman are given the most space. There is astonishing variety in here, with ballads, songs, and excerpts from epics; Romantic poems, Transcendentalist poems, political poems, etc, etc. One wonderful thing about the Library of America's poetry anthologies is that they include something for just about every mood and every taste. Get this book: it will become a treasured part of your library.
Rating:
Summary: The best...
Review: Volume 2 takes up where 1 left off, anthologizing in chronological order dozens of poets from Herman Melville (1819-1891) to Trumbull Stickney (1874-1904). Melville, Emily Dickinson, Sidney Lanier, and Stickney are given the most space. The last 150 or so pages of this anthology are given over to American Indian poetry and folk songs and spirituals. While I was a bit uncertain about what to expect from the Indian poetry, I was pleasantly surprised. Those poems and songs are printed in 19th century American English translations, and they mesh well with the rest of the volume
Rating:
Summary: The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 2
Review: Volume 2 takes up where 1 left off, anthologizing in chronological order dozens of poets from Herman Melville (1819-1891) to Trumbull Stickney (1874-1904). Melville, Emily Dickinson, Sidney Lanier, and Stickney are given the most space. The last 150 or so pages of this anthology are given over to American Indian poetry and folk songs and spirituals. While I was a bit uncertain about what to expect from the Indian poetry, I was pleasantly surprised. Those poems and songs are printed in 19th century American English translations, and they mesh well with the rest of the volume
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