{
  "full": "\n**CONRAD AIKEN, ed. AMERICAN POETRY 1671–1928. 1929–1944. A COMPREHENSIVE ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN POETRY. 1945–78. (ML 101)**  \n\n#### 169.1a. First printing (1929)  \n\n[within double rules] AMERICAN POETRY | 1671–1928 | [rule] | A COMPREHENSIVE ANTHOLOGY | EDITED BY | CONRAD AIKEN | [rule] | [torchbearer B] | [rule] | THE MODERN LIBRARY | PUBLISHERS : NEW YORK  \n\nPp. [i–iv] v–xviii, 1–362 [363–366]. [1–12]16  \n\n[i] half title; [ii] pub. note A6; [iii] title; [iv] *Copyright,* 1929, *by* THE MODERN LIBRARY, INC. | [short double rule] | *First Modern Library Edition* | 1929 | [short double rule]; v–vii *PREFACE* signed p. vii: Conrad Aiken.; [viii] blank; ix–x *ACKNOWLEDGMENTS*; xi–xviii *Contents*; 1–356 text; 357–362 INDEX [titles]; [363–366] ML list. (*Fall 1928*)  \n\n*Contents (poets and number of poems):* Anne Bradstreet (4), Thomas Godfrey (1), Philip Freneau (3), Richard Henry Dana (1), William Cullen Bryant (4), Edgar Allan Poe (18), Edward Coate Pinkney (2), T. H. Chivers (1), John Greenleaf Whittier (3), Oliver Wendell Holmes (1), James Russell Lowell (3), Maria White Lowell (1), Ralph Waldo Emerson (9), Henry David Thoreau (2), Julia Ward Howe (1), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (5), Walt Whitman (9), Louise Chandler Moulton (1), Richard Realf (1), Emily Dickinson (24), Helen Hunt Jackson (3), Edward Rowland Sill (1), John Townsend Trowbridge (1), George Henry Boker (1), Maurice Thompson (1), John Vance Cheney (1), Stephen Collins Foster (1), Thomas Bailey Aldrich (2), Herman Melville (1), John Burroughs (1), Joaquin Miller (1), Sidney Lanier (1), Henry Augustin Beers (1), John Bannister Tabb (1), Edwin Markham (1), William Vaughn Moody (3), Stephen Crane (1), George Cabot Lodge (1), George Santayana (4), Trumbull Stickney (6), Shaemas O’Sheel (1), Adelaide Crapsey (2), Edwin Arlington Robinson (4), Anna Hempstead Branch (2), Amy Lowell (3), Edgar Lee Masters (4), Vachel Lindsay (2), Robert Frost (10), Carl Sandburg (1), William Ellery Leonard (1), Alfred Kreymborg (1), John Gould Fletcher (3), H. D, (5), Louis Untermeyer (1), T. S. Eliot (6), Wallace Stevens (8), Edna St. Vincent Millay (2), John Hall Wheelock (1), Cale Young Rice (1), Elinor Wylie (5), Ezra Pound (7), E. E. Cummings (1), Archibald MacLeish (4), John Crowe Ransom (3), Marianne Moore (5).  \n\n*Jacket A:* Uniform typographic jacket D. Jacket title: *A Comprehensive Anthology of American Poetry*. (*Fall 1928*)  \n\n> Front flap: 
 Conrad Aiken was guided in his selections for this volume by the principle that American poetry has reached the maturity and dignity of the poetry of older countries. With this conviction firmly in mind, he could afford to eliminate some of the stodgy old bards and make place for the refreshing and vital work of the poets who have arisen during the last quarter century. Besides being representative, this anthology has the merit of being always on the side of excellence as against sentimentality and mediocrity. (*Spring 1934*)  \n\n*Jacket B:* Non-pictorial in vivid red (11) and black on cream paper with title and decorations in reverse on inset vivid red panel; other lettering in black, borders in vivid red. Jacket title: *A Comprehensive Anthology of American Poetry*. Front flap as jacket A. (*Fall 1936*)  \n\nOriginal ML anthology. Published January 1929. *WR* 23 February 1929. First printing: Not ascertained. Revised edition published 1945 as *A Comprehensive Anthology of American Poetry* (169.2a).  \n\nAiken’s anthology ranked in the middle of the second quarter of ML titles in terms of sales during the 18-month period, May 1942–October 1943. It was not among the 100 bestselling ML titles in the regular ML during the 12-month period November 1951–October 1952.  \n\nErrors that Aiken noted in his own copy are listed in Bonnell and Bonnell, p. 92 (1982).  \n\n#### 169.1b. Title page reset (c. 1941)  \n\n[torchbearer D5] | [6-line title and statement of responsibility within single rules] AMERICAN | POETRY | 1671–1928 | A COMPREHENSIVE | ANTHOLOGY | EDITED BY CONRAD AIKEN | [below frame] THE MODERN LIBRARY · NEW YORK  \n\nPagination and collation as 169.1a.  \n\nContents as 169.1a except: [ii] blank; [iv] COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY THE MODERN LIBRARY, INC.; [363–366] blank.  \n\n*Jacket:* Non-pictorial in dark gray (266) and dark brown (59) on cream paper with title in reverse on dark gray panel at upper left; borders and other lettering in dark brown. Jacket title: *A Comprehensive Anthology of American Poetry*. Text on front: “An anthology that includes every American poet of note from the seventeenth century to the present day. A companion volume is ‘MODERN AMERICAN POETRY’ Volume no. 127 in The Modern Library.” Designed by Joseph Blumenthal. \n\n> Front flap as 169.1a jacket A. (*Spring 1942*)  \n\n#### 169.2a. Revised edition; title changed (1945)  \n\n[within ornamental frame] *A COMPREHENSIVE* | *ANTHOLOGY OF* | AMERICAN | POETRY | [short decorative rule] | *Edited by Conrad Aiken* | [short decorative rule] | [torchbearer D6] | THE MODERN LIBRARY | *New York*  \n\nPp. [i–iv] v–xxii, [1–2] 3–490. [1–16]16  \n\n[i] half title; [ii] blank; [iii] title; [iv] *Copyright, 1929, 1944, by Random House, Inc., New York*; v–viii *ACKNOWLEDGMENTS*; ix–xii *INTRODUCTION* signed p. xii: CONRAD AIKEN | *Brewster, Massachusetts.* | 1944; xiii–xxii *CONTENTS*; [1] fly title; [2] blank; 3–478 text; 479–481 *INDEX OF POETS*; 482–490 *INDEX OF FIRST LINES*.  \n\n*Poets added (\\*) and number of poems added or deleted for poets included in 1929 edition:* Herman Melville (+5), Sidney Lanier (+1), Trumbull Stickney (+4), Amy Lowell (–1), Robert Frost (+4), Carl Sandburg (+3), Vachel Lindsay (+1), Wallace Stevens (+2), \\*Witter Bynner (5), Elinor Wylie (+1), Ezra Pound (+5), Marianne Moore (+1), \\*Robinson Jeffers (3), \\*Marsden Hartley (3), T. S. Eliot (+3), John Crowe Ransom (+3), Archibald MacLeish (+1), \\*Mark Van Doren (4), E. E. Cummings (+3), \\*H. Phelps Putnam (2), \\*Robert Hillyer (1), \\*Edmund Wilson (2), \\*Louise Bogan (1), \\*Malcolm Cowley (1), \\*Theodore Spencer (2), \\*R. P. Blackmur (2), \\*Yvor Winters (1), \\*John Wheelwright (2), \\*Allen Tate (1), \\*Hart Crane (3), \\*Oscar Williams (2), \\*Robert Penn Warren (2), \\*Kenneth Patchen (1), \\*Delmore Schwartz (2), \\*Richard Eberhart (1), \\*Karl Jay Shapiro (4), \\*John Malcolm Brinnin (1), \\*Lloyd Frankenberg (2), \\*José Garcia Villa (6). *Note:* None of the poets included in the 1929 edition were deleted from the 1945 edition.  \n\n*Jacket A:* As 169.1b except text on front: “A newly edited anthology that includes every American poet of note from the seventeenth century to the present day—a companion volume to TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY, No. 127 in the Modern Library.”  \n\n> Front flap rewritten: 
 In revising this volume, Conrad Aiken was guided in his selections by the principle that American poetry has reached the maturity and dignity of the poetry of older countries. With this conviction in mind, he could eliminate some of the stand-bys of older anthologies and make place for the refreshing and vital work of the poets who have arisen in the quarter of a century between the two world wars. This anthology offers the work of the best American poets from the time of the Revolution to the present day. (*Spring 1945*) *Note:* \n\n> Front flap reset in sans serif type from the flap text of 169.1a. It is not known if the reversion to the earlier text was deliberate or accidental. (*Fall 1953*)  \n\n*Jacket B:* As 169.1b on coated white paper with dark purplish red (259) replacing dark gray and strong purplish red (255) replacing dark brown. \n\n> Front flap as 169.1a. (*Fall 1964*)  \n\nPublished February 1945. *WR* not found. First printing: Not ascertained. Discontinued 1978/79. *Note:* The copyright date is 1944, but publication of *A Comprehensive Anthology of Modern Poetry* appears to have been delayed until early 1945 because of wartime paper shortages.  \n\n*A Comprehensive Anthology of American Poetry* also comprised the American portion of the ML Giant, *An Anthology of Famous English and American Poetry* (G68b), published in December 1945. At Cerf’s insistence the initial printings of the Giant omitted the poems of Ezra Pound, who had been taken into custody in Italy in May 1945 and was later returned to the United States to face charges of treason. Cerf ignored Aiken’s strenuous objections but agreed to list the twelve omitted poems and to include that statement that Aiken had been “overruled by the publishers, who flatly refused at this time to include a single line by Ezra Pound” (Cerf’s distaste for Pound’s politics was focused entirely on the forthcoming anthology. There was never any suggestion of purging Pound from *A Comprehensive Anthology of American Poetry* or *Twentieth-Century American Poetry* (137.2), both of which were published shortly before Pound’s arrest. The removal of Pound’s poems from the Giant was widely condemned, and they were restored in the 1947 printing (see G68).  \n\nSince the regular ML edition of *A Comprehensive Anthology of American Poetry* (169.2) and Aiken’s portion of the Giant are printed from different type settings, it may be of interest to compare the two formats. With the restoration of Pound’s poems in G68b, the content of the two editions is identical except for a 7-line footnote on p. 788 of the Giant indicating that Pound’s poems had been restored. Both books are printed in the same typeface, but the Giant uses a larger point size. The type page of 169.2 consists of 41 lines, including the headline, compared to 43 lines in the Giant. The dimensions of the type pages are 146 x 86 mm in the regular edition and 170 x 101 mm in the Giant. Most of the poetry is unaffected by the width of the type page, but there are lines of Walt Whitman that occupy two lines of type in the regular edition and a single line in the Giant. Excluding preliminaries, indexes, and the fly title, the poems occupy 476 pages in the regular edition and 420 pages in the Giant.  \n\n*American Poetry 1671*–*1928* and *A Comprehensive Anthology of American Poetry* do not include Phillis Wheatley, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, or any other African American poet. These and other African American poets had been represented in *An Anthology of American Negro Literature* (183), edited by V. F. Calverton and published in the ML nine months after the first edition of Aiken’s anthology. Calverton’s anthology was out of print by the time *A Comprehensive Anthology of American Poetry* appeared in 1945. The revised edition of *An Anthology of American Negro Literature* (372), edited by Sylvestre C. Watkins and available in the ML between 1944 and 1956, excluded poetry on the grounds that “five outstanding anthologies” edited by Arna Bontemps, James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Beatrice M. Murphy, and R. J. Kerlin had appeared since the publication of Calverton’s volume (Preface, p. xii). It does not appear to have occurred to Aiken to comment on the exclusion of African American poets from his anthology.  \n\n#### 169.2b. Title page with Fujita torchbearer (c. 1969)  \n\nTitle as 169.2a except line 8: [torchbearer K].  \n\nPagination as 169.2a. [1]16 [2–8]32 [9]16. Contents as 169.2a except: [iv] COPYRIGHT, 1929, 1944, BY RANDOM HOUSE, INC.  \n\n*Jacket:* As 169.2a jacket B.  \n\nAlso in the Modern Library  \nAiken, ed., *Modern American Poets* (1927–1940); *Modern American Poetry* (1940‑1945); *Twentieth-Century American Poetry* (1945–) 137  \nAiken and Benét, eds., *Anthology of Famous English and American Poetry* (Giant, 1945–1971) G68  \n\n",
  "id": "169",
  "year": "1929",
  "label": "CONRAD AIKEN, ed. AMERICAN POETRY 1671–1928. 1929–1944. A COMPREHENSIVE ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN POETRY. 1945–78. (ML 101)",
  "author": "CONRAD AIKEN, ed",
  "title": "AMERICAN POETRY 1671–1928. 1929–1944. A COMPREHENSIVE ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN POETRY. 1945–78.",
  "date": "",
  "something": "ML 101",
  "revisions": [],
  "type": "book"
}