Skip Navigation.

American Poetry to 1900

Walt Whitman

Works By Title | Works By Author

Scope:

American Poetry to 1900, includes 1,288 works by 209 poets, along with six landmark anthologies of American poetry. The database gathers the works of the most influential American poets, from the Colonial period to the early twentieth century. The bibliographic basis for American Poetry is the Bibliography of American Literature, Yale University Press, 1955-1991.

In general, texts contemporary with their author are preferred, and when available, collected editions are used. For those poets whose established canons cannot be covered by contemporary printings, reliable later editions are used. In the great majority of cases, only a single version of each poem appears in the database. However, a small number of poems found in some poets' collections may be duplicated in the anthologies; and the 1855, 1856, 1860, 1872, and 1891 editions of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass have all been included. The entire text of each poem is included. Authorial notes accompanying the text and forming an integral part of the poems, such as dedications, notes, arguments, and epigraphs are generally included. Volume-specific front and back matter, such as advertisements, prefaces and introductions, editorial apparatus, dedicatory epistles, glossaries and indexes is usually excluded.

American Poetry does not aim to be comprehensive, but to contain the following, up to the year 1900:

A few poets active after 1900 are also included. Poems published only in journals, gazettes or periodicals are generally excluded, as are translations. Verse dramas are included.

In addition to the works of these 200 poets, American Poetry includes four major anthologies published before 1840:

Access, Copyright, and Use:

This collection is restricted to use by the VIVA Community via license from Chadwyck-Healey/Pro-Quest Information and Learning.

Texts may be printed out to create hardcopy editions for teaching or research, providing that the rights of original copyright holders are not infringed. Only a small proportion of the texts in the database are in copyright and such copyrights are clearly noticed in the headers for each work. Small extracts of text may be saved to create databases for teaching, research and personal use and may be incorporated in an article or essay for publication in a journal or collected work. Texts may not be used for publication in electronic formats whether on their own or with other texts or in modified form without written permission from Chadwyck-Healey. Such permissions will not be unreasonably withheld. The publication of larger extracts of texts in printed form requires the written permission of Chadwyck-Healey.

Works By Title