Description
A portrait of William Cullen Bryant from the book, The Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant. This book has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. [Source: Google Books]
Annotation
An original bookplate from 1903, 1st edition book titled, “The Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant”. There were 1,900 copies printed. This image is from the Frontispiece from The Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant. Below the engraving is the facsimile signature, the text below the signature is clearly readable: ‘Eng. Barl’ (lower left) Photo by Sarsony (lower right) Lower left – high quality – no foxing.
Condition
This shrink-wrapped print is stored in an architectural flat-file drawer. Ours is a smoke-free adult environment. Very good: clean surface, this piece has been stored in an architectural flat file drawer in a smoke-free adult environment. All of our prints are kept in tissue and/or plastic sleeves and mailed flat to ensure safe travels. We do not list artwork with visible surface conditions, marks, or damage beyond the perimeter margins (unless specifically noted for rare prints). Virtually all antiquarian maps and prints are subject to some normal aging due to use and time which is not obtrusive unless otherwise stated.
Virtually all antiquarian maps and prints are subject to some normal aging due to use and time which is not obtrusive unless otherwise stated.
About William Cullen Bryant
Mr. Bryant was born in Cummington, Massachusetts, on the third day of November 1794. At a very early age he gave indications of superior genius, and his father, an eminent physician, distinguished for erudition and taste as well as for extensive and thorough knowledge of science, watched with deep interest the development of his faculties under the most careful and judicious instruction. At ten years of age, he made very credible translations from some of the Latin poets, which were printed in a newspaper at Northampton and during the vehement controversies between Federalists and Democrats, which marked the period of Jefferson’s administration, he wrote, “The Embargo,” a political satire, which was printed in Boston in 1809. . . . The satire was directed against President Jefferson and his party. . . .
Some of the democrats affected to believe that Master Bryant was older than was confessed, or that another person had written, “The Embargo;” but the book was eagerly read, and in a few months a second edition appeared, with some additional pieces. . . .
In the sixteenth year of his age, Bryant entered an advanced class of Williams College, in which he soon became distinguished for his attainments generally, and especially for his proficiency in classical learning. In 1812 he obtained from the faculty an honorable discharge, for the purpose of entering upon the study of the law, and in 1815 he was admitted to the bar, and commenced the practice of his profession in the village of Great Barrington, where he was soon after married.
When but little more than eighteen years of age he had written his noble poem of “Thanatopsis,” which was published in the North American Review for 1816. In 1821 he delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College his long poem, “The ages,” in which, from a survey of the past eras of the world, and of the successive advances of mankind in knowledge, virtue, and happiness, he endeavors to justify and confirm the hopes of the philanthropist for the future destinies of man. It is in the stanza of Spenser, and in its versification is not inferior to “The Faerie Queene.” “To a Waterfowl,” “Inscription for an entrance to a Wood,” and several other pieces of nearly as great merit were likewise written during his residence at Great Barrington.
Having passed ten years in a successful practice in the courts, he determined to abandon the uncongenial business of a lawyer, and devote his attention more exclusively to literature. With this view, in 1825, he removed to the city of New York, and with a friend, established “The New York Review and Athenaeum Magazine,” in which he published several of his finest poems, and in “The Hymn to Death” paid a touching tribute to the memory of his father, who died in that year. In 1826 he assumed the chief direction of the “Evening Post,” one of the oldest and most influential political and commercial gazettes in this country, with which he has ever since been connected. In 1827, 1828, and 1829, he was associated with Mr. Verplank and Mr. Sands in the production of “The Talisman,” an annual; and he wrote two or three of the “Tales of Glauber Spa,” to which, besides himself, Miss Sedgwick, Mr. Pauling, Mr. Leggett, and Mr. Sands were contributors. An intimate friendship subsisted between him and Mr. Sands, and when that brilliant writer died, in 1832, he assisted Mr. Verplanck in editing his works.
In 1832 a collection of all the poems Mr. Bryant had then written was published in New York; it was soon after reprinted in Boston, and a copy of it reaching Washington Irving, who was then in England, he caused it to be published in London, where it has since passed through several editions. In 1842 he published “The Fountain and Other Poems;” in 1844 “The White-footed Deer and other Poems;” in 1846 an edition of his complete Poetical Words, illustrated with engravings from pictures by Leutze; and in 1855 another edition, containing his later poems, in two volumes. In prose . . . [he published] “Letters of a Traveller;” this appeared in 1852, and he has since revisited Europe and made a journey through Egypt and the Holy Land.
Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century 57-61 (New York: Routledge, 1998)]
