1872 "Picturesque America" edited by William Cullen Bryant

Item Details

A large and exceptionally beautiful two-volume first edition of Picturesque America: Or, the Land We Live In, edited by the poet William Cullen Bryant (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1972) and including 45 tissue paper-protected steel-engraved plates, and over 900 steel-engraved illustrations.

Picturesque America was the first comprehensive pictorial representation of the entire continental United States as it had extended by 1872. Bryant explains its historical significance thusly: ‘It is the design of the publication entitled Picturesque America to present full descriptions and elaborate pictorial delineations of the scenery characteristic of all the different parts of our country. . . . Among our White Mountains, our Catskills, our Alleghanies, our Rocky Mountains, and our Sierra Nevada, we have some of the wildest and most beautiful scenery in the world. On our majestic rivers — among the largest on either continent — and on our lakes — the largest and noblest in the world — the country often wears an aspect in which beauty is blended with majesty; and on our prairies and savannas the spectator, surprised at the vastness of their features, finds himself, notwithstanding the soft and gentle sweep of their outlines, overpowered with a sense of sublimity. . . . It is quite safe to assert that a book of American scenery like Picturesque America will lay before American readers more scenes entirely new to them than a similar book on Europe. . . . there are innumerable places which lie out of the usual path of our artists and tourists; and many strange, picturesque, and charming scenes, sought out in these secluded spots, will, for the first time, become familiar to the general public through these pages.’

The title page goes on to describe the book as ‘a delineation by pen and pencil of the mountains, rivers, lakes, forests, water-falls, shores, canons, valleys, cities, and other picturesque features of our country, with illustrations on steel and wood, by eminent American American artists.’ Each chapter of the book provides a detailed description of a scenic American locale by an author who is familiar with it, and each chapter is illustrated with a copious number of illustrations of various types. The steel-cut plates are printed on thicker white paper protected by tissue paper, whilst the 900 other plates are printed on regular paper. Each book has a beautiful frontispiece and elaborate pictorial title page in addition to a text one. The end-papers are custom marbled.

The heavy boards of these volumes are bound in polished brown calfskin, with black-stamped floral-patterned tooling to both boards, and elaborate gilded titling to the front cover. The spines are decorated with tooled insignia, gilt lettering, and raised bands. The boards have minute gilt tooling on their insides where they meet the page block, which has itself been brightly gilded on all exposed edges.

Condition

- There is wear to the edges and corners of the volumes.
- The raised bands show wear. The hinges show cosmetic wear, but are otherwise solid.
- The gilt edges are bright and unfaded.

Dimensions

Item #

15CIN457-074