2V William Cullen Bryant PICTURESQUE AMERICA OR THE LAND WE LIVE IN 1872-1874 Oversized Complete Set Deluxe Bindings Leather Gilt Steel & Wood Engraving Illustrated American Artists Landscape Scenery Armchair Travel

Title: Picturesque America; Or, the Land We live In. 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
Author: Uncredited
Editor: William Cullen Bryant - William Cullen Bryant was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post.
Publisher: D. Appleton and Comany
City: New York
Year: 1872-1874
Binding Style: Hardcover
Number of Volumes: 2 Full Set: Yes
Width: 10.5" Height: 13"
Book Details: This complete two-volume oversized set is decoratively bound in brown cloth and leather with gilt ornament and lettering to the front boards and raised spines, as well as full-edge gilt. These volumes are enhanced by engraved illustrated, tissue-guarded frontispieces and faux-title pages, and further supplemented with numerous illustrated plates and in-text illustrations.

Picturesque America is a two-volume set of books describing and illustrating the scenery of America, which grew out of an earlier series in Appleton's Journal. It was published by D. Appleton and Company of New York in 1872 and 1874 and edited by the romantic poet and journalist William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), who also edited the New York Evening Post. The layout and concept was similar to that of Picturesque Europe. The work's essays, together with its nine hundred wood engravings and fifty steel engravings, are considered to have had a profound influence on the growth of tourism and the historic preservation movement in the United States.

The preface described "the design of this publication to present full descriptions and elaborate pictorial delineations of the scenery characteristic of all the different parts of our country. The wealth of material for this purpose is almost boundless."

This two-volume set and others of the same genre, achieved great popularity in the nineteenth century. Their illustrations provided a tour of nineteenth century America, unspoilt and pastoral, its centres of commerce, ports, architecture and natural treasures. In a modern (2001) treatment of the work, Sue Rainey, who is a historian of American graphic arts and has a particular interest in the artists who drew landscapes and cityscapes for periodical and book illustrations, wrote "As the first publication to celebrate the entire continental nation, it enabled Americans, after the trauma of the Civil War, to construct a national self-image based on reconciliation between North and South and incorporation of the West." (p. xiii) The volumes display both steel and wood engravings based on the paintings of some of the best American landscape painters of the nineteenth century, primarily Harry Fenn and his friend Douglas Woodward, but also including John Frederick Kensett, William Stanley Haseltine, James David Smillie, John William Casilear, Thomas Moran, A. C. Warren, David Johnson, Granville Perkins, Felix Octavius Carr Darley, Albert Fitch Bellows, James McDougal Hart, Casimir Clayton Griswold (1834-1918), Worthington Whittredge, Charles G. Rosenberg (1818 - 1879), William Ludwell Sheppard (1833-1912), Homer Dodge Martin, Alfred Rudolph Waud, William Hart, Robert Swain Gifford, Jules Tavernier, William Hamilton Gibson, and Thomas Cole.

Engravers included Robert Hinshelwood (1812-1885), Edward Paxman Brandard (1819-1898), Samuel Valentine Hunt (1803-1893), William Wellstood (1819-1900), William Chapin (1802-1888), Henry Bryan Hall (1808-1884).
Condition / Notes: These handsome oversized volumes show well with some typical indications of age and wear, including shelfwear and rubbing. Bindings and text blocks are sound. Text and illustrations remain clear and crisp through mild age toning/foxing.

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