Abraham Lincoln read it with approval, but Emily Dickinson described its bold language and themes as "disgraceful." Ralph Waldo Emerson found it "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet produced." Published at the author's expense on July 4, 1855, Leaves of Grass inaugurated a new voice and style into American letters and gave expression to an optimistic, bombastic vision that took the nation as its subject. Unlike many...

In nineteenth-century America, poetry was, part of everyday life, as familiar as a hymn, a love song, a patriotic exhortation. American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century reveals the vigor and diversity of a tradition embracing solitary visionaries and congenial storytellers, humorists and dissidents, songwriters and philosophers. These two volumes reassess America's poetic legacy with a comprehensive sweep that no previous anthology has attempted. This...

Universally acclaimed as the maestro of horror and the morbid, Edgar Allan Poe's dark gift has for more than a century and a half set the standard for the genre. Now, Caedmon Audio presents a classic collection of Poe's most terrifying tales performed by two of the most brilliant interpreters of his work, Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone. Between them, they perform 20 of Poe's chilling stories and poems, creating an unforgettably intense listening...

Before Black Lives Matter and Hamilton, there were abolitionist poets, who put pen to paper during an era when speaking out against slavery could mean risking your life. Indeed, William Lloyd Garrison was dragged through the streets by a Boston mob before a planned lecture, and publisher Elijah P. Lovejoy was fatally shot while defending his press from rioters. Since poetry formed a part of the cultural, political, and emotional lives of readers,...

A volume of graphic novel renderings of some of Edgar Allan Poe's best-known works includes "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Raven."