The Nineteenth Century in Print: Books

Sampler of Collection Themes: Introduction | The Civil War | Slavery and Abolition | Religion | Education Self-Help and Self-Improvement | Travel and Westward Expansion | Poetry

Poetry

Many nineteenth-century Americans revelled in the amplitude of language, whether spoken or written, and delighted to frame their perceptions in the structures of poetry. The result was an outpouring of poetic works and the extensive employment of poetic quotation in texts of many kinds. The works assembled in The Nineteenth Century in Print suggest how many realms of American experience were fixed in poetic reflection, from cataclysmic public events to intimate dimensions of private and personal life. Almost any theme from the prose works in this collection can also be traced in its poetry. If today’s readers find many of these works aesthetically uninspiring, they can also find among them a wealth of insights into the social and cultural dispositions of a complex young nation.

John Quincy Adams, Poems of Religion and Society. With Notices of His Life and Character by John Davis and T. H. Benton (1848).

Washington Allston, Lectures on Art, and Poems, ed. Richard Henry Dana Jr. (1850).

T. S. Arthur, Our Little Harry, and Other Poems and Stories. With Illus. from Original Designs by Croome (1853).

Park Benjamin, A Poem on the Meditation of Nature, Spoken September 26th, 1832, before the Associaiton of the Alumni of Washington College (1832).

Charles T. Brooks, Aquidnock a Poem Pronounced on the Hundredth Anniversary of . . . the Redwood Library Company, Newport, R.I., 1847, with Other Commemorative Pieces (1848).

Henry Howard Brownell, War-Lyrics and Other Poems (1866).

William Cullen Bryant, ed., The Family Library of Poetry and Song (1880).

Will Carleton, Young Folks' Centennial Rhymes (1876).

Hamlin Garland, The Trail of the Goldseekers; A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse (1899).

Richard Watson Gilder, The Great Remembrance and Other Poems (1893).

Fitz-Greene Halleck, Alnwick Castle, with Other Poems (1845).

Bret Harte, East and West, Poems (1871).

Charles Fenno Hoffman, The Vigil of Faith and Other Poems (1845).

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Grandmother's Story and Other Poems . . . with Notes and a Biographical Sketch (1883).

Richard Hovey, Seaward; An Elegy on the Death of Thomas William Parsons (1893).

Helen Jackson, A Calendar of Sonnets (1891).

Benjamin F. Johnson [James Whitcomb Riley],"The Old Swimmin'-Hole" and 'Leven More Poems. Neghborly [!] Poems on Friendship, Grief and Farm-Life (1891).

Sidney Lanier, Poems of Sidney Lanier, Edited by His Wife; With a Memorial by William Hayes Ward (1885).

Lucy Larcom, An Idyl of Work (1875).

George Parsons Lathrop, ed., A Masque of Poets: Including Guy Vernon, a Novelette in Verse (1878).

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Courtship of Miles Standish, and Other Poems (1858).

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha (1855).

James Russell Lowell, Poems of James Russell Lowell, with Biographical Sketch by Nathan Haskell Dole ([c1898]).

Edwin Markham, Lincoln & Other Poems (1901).

A. B. Meek, Songs and Poems of the South (1857).

Joaquin Miller, The Complete Poetical Works of Joaquin Miller (1897).

S. Weir Mitchell, A Psalm of Deaths and Other Poems (1890).

G. P. Morris and N. P. Willis, comps., The Prose and Poetry of Europe and America: Consisting of Literary Gems and Curiosities, and Containing the Choice and Beautiful Productions of Many of the Most Popular Writers of the Past and Present Age (1853).

Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems, . . . Edited by Her Brother, Arthur B. Fuller ([ c1859]).

James G. Percival, Poem Delivered before the Connecticut Alpha of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, September 13, 1825 ([c1825]).

John James Piatt, Poems of House and Home (1879).

John Pierpont, The Anti-Slavery Poems of John Pierpont (1843).

Proceedings at the Centennial Celebration of Concord Fight, April 19, 1875 (1876).

James Whitcomb Riley, Riley Love-Lyrics . . . with Life Pictures by William B. Dyer ([c1899]).

James Ryder Randall, Maryland, My Maryland, and Other Poems ([c1908]).

Mrs. L. H. Sigourney, Pocahontas, and Other Poems (1841).

Elizabeth Oakes Smith, The Sinless Child, and Other Poems. Edited by John Keese (1843).

Richard Henry Stoddard, Abraham Lincoln. An Horatian Ode (1865).

Celia Thaxter, Poems for Children . . . with Illustrations by Miss A. G. Plymptom (1884).

Rose Hartwick Thorpe, Ringing Ballads, Including Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight ([1887]).

George Van Waters, The Poetical Geography, Designed To Accompany Outline Maps or School Atlases. To Which Are Added the Rules of Arithmetic in Rhyme (1852).

John Greenleaf Whittier, Ballads of New England (1870).

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Custer, and Other Poems ([c1896]).

N. P. Willis, Sacred Poems (1853).

Samuel Woodworth, Melodies, Duets, Trios, Songs, and Ballads, Pastoral, Amatory, Sentimental, Patriotic, Religious, and Miscellaneous. Together with Metrical Epistles, Tales and Recitations (1831).