Abstract

Before he became infamous for character assassination disguised as literary executorship, Rufus W. Griswold established his reputation in America as a critic and early literary anthologist. In 1842, Griswold released the first edition of his massive Poets and Poetry of America with prominent Philadelphia publisher Carey and Hart. At nearly five hundred royal octavo pages—complete with elaborate frontispiece; ornamental title page with an etching by George Hewitt Cushman after Thomas Creswick; twelve-page, double-columned “historical introduction”; authorial headnotes; and selections of verse from more than one hundred poets active in the roughly seventy years since American independence—Griswold’s volume was...