1882 LIBRARY OF CHOICE LITERATURE. William Blake, Mark Twain, George MacDonald, Thomas Jefferson, &c

A luxuriously presented fine binding example of The Library of Choice Literature, a new American Literary Canon compiled by the founder of the Library of Congress. 

This beautifully produced and illustrated collection drew together prose and poetry by authors spanning from ancient times through to the 1880s. The selections were made by two towering figures in the literary world.

Ainsworth Spofford by this time had transformed the small reference library that served the U.S. Congress into a national institution that also served the American public, permanently joining the legislative and national functions of the Library of Congress. He oversaw the expansion of the Library of Congress into a national library and placed it in charge of the national copyright system, allowing it to receive a copy of all works copyrighted in the United States. He also oversaw the lengthy construction and move to the Thomas Jefferson Building.

His co-editor, Charles Gibbon (1843-1890), brought a very different perspective, that of a working literary man on the British side. He was a British novelist specializing in popular romances. He had previously edited The Casquet of Literature in six volumes (1873–74), a separate successful anthology project.

Edited by the creator of the Library of Congress, the set was designed to stand as standard of cultural aspiration for middle-class households. Its attention to aesthetics in binding, text, and illustration was considered as important as its contents, signaling that literature was something to be prized and displayed, not merely consumed. It also sought to begin laying claim to the literary legacy of America by placing authors such as John Quincy Adams, Twain, Jefferson, Poe, Benjamin Franklin, etc., on the same pages as Milton, Shakespeare, Burns, and Browning.

Authors include Victor Hugo, Samuel F. Smith [America], Henry Ward Beecher, John Quincy Adams, Samuel Langhorne Clemens [Mark Twain], William Cowper, Blaise Pascal, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Keats, Edgar Allan Poe, John Milton, Sir Philip Sydney, Hannah More, John Greenleaf Whittier, John Ruskin, William Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Burns, Daniel Webster, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Thomas Jefferson, George MacDonald, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Henry David Thoreau, William Blake, etc. 

Spofford, Ainsworth R., and Charles Gibbons [eds.]. The Library of Choice Literature, Prose and Poetry, Selected from the Most Admired Authors. Illustrated with Sixty-Six Engravings on Steel. In Eight Volumes. Philadelphia. Gebbie & Co. 1882. First Complete Edition. 

As fine an example as we ever hope to see; issued in a cloth binding and a far more expensive half leather example as here. Leather remains butter soft, colors on marbled boards and foredges crisp. Some light rubbing, very minor occasional bump or abrasion, but very good. Textually, near fine with almost no discernible foxing, highly unusual. Worthy of the finest shelf company.