Picturesque America: Or, The Land We Live In. A Delineation by Pen and Pencil of The Mountains, Rivers, Lakes, Forest, Water-Falls, Shores, Cañons, Valleys, Cities, and Other Picturesque Features of Our Country.

BRYANT, William Cullen.

$1,500.00

Item Number: 146884

New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1872-1874.

First edition of this immensely popular and influential 19th century celebration of the American landscape. Folio, two volumes in the original publisher’s deluxe full morocco with gilt titles to the spine in six compartments within raised bands, gilt titles and central vignette to the front panels, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles. marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, illustrated with nine hundred wood engravings and fifty steel engravings after Harry Fenn, A. C. Warren, Thomas Moran, Granville Perkins, and William Hart among others, tissue-guarded frontispiece and additional decorative pictorial title page to each volume. In very good condition. A very sharp example of this famed work.

"'Picturesque America' was a conspicuous presence in the popular culture of the United States in the post-Civil War years. First published as a magazine series in Appleton's Journal, then as a subscription book, in parts, from 1872 to 1874 it reached a huge audience. Its voluminous text and over 900 pictures represented the first comprehensive celebration of the entire continental nation. By testifying to the variety, uniqueness and potential wealth of the American landscape and the advanced civilization of its cities, 'Picturesque America' laid the foundation for a resurgence of nationalism rooted in the homeland itself, rather than in institutions of democracy as would have been the case earlier in the century" (Sue Rainey, Creating Picturesque America: Monument to the Natural and Cultural Landscape).