WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794-1878)

William Cullen Bryant published this, his first collection of poems, when he was twenty-seven years old. "Thanatopsis," the most outstanding piece in this collection of eight poems and certainly the most famous of all his verse, was first published in the Hampshire Gazette when the author was only seventeen. Another poem of note in this volume is the mystico-religious "To a Waterfowl."

The manuscript for Poems was edited for publication by Richard Henry Dana, Sr. and E.T. Channing, and printed by Hilliard and Metcalf in an edition of 750 in late August or early September of 1821. Some copies were bound in boards and some in wrappers. This issue shown is an unopened copy in its brown printed wrappers. It is conjectured that only 200 copies were bound this way.