The Republican Court of American Society in the Days of Washington.

GRISWOLD, Rufus Wilmot.

$650.00

Item Number: 138600

New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1854.

First edition of Griswold’s account of the American Republican Court during the presidency of George Washington. Quarto, original publisher’s full morocco with gilt titles to the spine, elaborate stamping to the spine and panels, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, illustrated with twenty-one portraits of distinguished women including Mrs. George Washington and Mrs. Alexander Hamilton engraved from original pictures by Woolaston, Copley, Trumbull, et al. In very good condition.

Born in Vermont, American anthologist Rufus Wilmot Griswold remains best known for his 1842 collection The Poets and Poetry of America. This anthology, the most comprehensive of its time, included what he deemed the best examples of American poetry. Edgar Allan Poe, whose poetry had been included in Griswold's anthology, published a critical response that questioned which poets were included. This began a rivalry which grew when Griswold succeeded Poe as editor of Graham's Magazine at a salary higher than Poe's. Later, the two competed for the attention of poet Frances Sargent Osgood. They never reconciled their differences, and after Poe's mysterious death in 1849, Griswold wrote an unsympathetic obituary. Claiming to be Poe's chosen literary executor, he began a campaign to harm Poe's reputation that lasted until his own death eight years later.