Cambridge, MA: Hilliard and Metcalf, 1821.  Octavo, original boards.  $1500.

First edition of Bryant's first collection of poems, including "Thanatopsis", the poem that made Bryant famous at the age of 17. 

Bryant was a major literary figure in the first half of the nineteenth century and the "first American writer of verse to win international acclaim," (Tomlinson). Bryant's peers included such notables as Longfellow, Whittier, James Russell Lowell and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., all of whom achieved considerable fame in their own day but have been eclipsed by the likes of Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Whitman and Thoreau. With tipped-in engraved portrait, signed by Brant.  A few stray marks to boards, light wear to spine; foxing to endpapers.  An attractive copy in original boards.