American Anthology + Victorian Anthology, Stedman. These two poetry books are titled “An American Anthology 1787 - 1900, Selections Illustrating The Editor’s Critical Review Of American Poetry In The Nineteenth Century” and “A Victorian Anthology 1837 - 1895, Selections Illustrating The Editor’s Critical Review Of British Poetry In The Reign Of Victoria”, both edited by Edmund Clarence Stedman and published by Houghton Mifflin. The American Anthology is a third impression that was published in 1901 (the first edition was published in 1900), and The Victorian Anthology is an eleventh impression that was copyrighted in 1895 and published around 1902. . Both books have five raised bands, with six gilt-ruled compartments and gilt lettering on the spine, a gilt-decorated outer border and an inner double gilt-fillet border on blue morocco covers, marbled endpapers with wide gilt dentelles, an inscription on the front blank flyleaf that reads “Mary Farquhar Chittenden, from Mrs. S. L. Smith, January 7th 1902, Flint Michigan”, half-titles, a frontispiece with tissue guards, the title pages, a ribbon marker, and all the edges are gilt. The American Anthology has a frontis collage with portraits of famous American poets (Poe, Longfellow, Whitman, Whittier, Bryant, Holmes, Lowell, and Sidney Lanier), a vignette title page with a photograph of Emerson’s grave, the copyright page is dated 1900 and says “Third Impression”, then a Copyright Notice seven pages long to acknowledge copyrights for all the poets named in the book, an Introduction that runs from xv to xxxiv, a twenty-three page Table of Contents (xxxv - lxvii), the text ends at 773, then Biographical Notes that end at page 834, and three Indexes - one for first lines, another for titles and another for the names of the poets - for a total of 878 pages in the book, and the book includes poetry from Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Edgar Allan Poe, among others. The Victorian Anthology has a frontis portrait of Queen Victoria, a vignette title page with a photograph of Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey, the copyright page is dated 1895 and says “Eleventh Impression”, then a seven-page Introduction (ix - xv), a Table of Contents that runs from xvii - xl, 676 pages of text, Biographical Notes from 676 to 710, and three Indexes - one for first lines, another for titles, and the last one for the names of the poets - for a total of 744 pages in the book after the Table of Contents. See BAL18674. Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833 - 1908) was an American poet, critic, banker, and scientist from Hartford, Connecticut; he moved to Plainfield, New Jersey as a young boy, then moved back to Norwich, Connecticut, entered Yale, dropped out, and was later restored to the Class of 1853 by Yale, which also gave him a Masters of Arts degree. He became a journalist at the Norwich Tribune when he was only 19, then edited the Herald in Winstead, Conn. and was a staff member at the Tribune in New York City, where he became a member of the New York Stock Exchange for thirty-five years; he is remembered for some of his poetry as well, and he edited ten volumes about the works of Edgar Allen Poe and was one of the first seven people chosen to join the American Academy of Arts and Letters; he also designed a dirigible in 1879 based on the anatomy of a fish, with a framework of steel, brass, or copper tubing and a tractor propeller mounted on the craft's bow, which he later changed to an engine with two propellers suspended beneath the framework - this foreshadowed the invention of the modern dirigible decades later. The books are a thick 8vo. and measure 8 3/8 x 6 in. wide and are in great condition. The bindings are tight, the pages and text are very clean, as are the frontispieces, the gilt is still bright, and the only blemishes we could find are light rubbing near the heel and crowns, specks of rubbing at the tips, a couple of tips are slightly turned in, a faint shadow on the front cover of the Victorian Anthology, probably from being placed next to another book on the shelf, and two small ink spots on the edge of the inscription page in the Victorian Anthology. Overall a very attractive anthology set edited by Edmund Clarence Stedman. #237 #1686