Everything Old Is New Again

Yesterday I wrote about Peach Street Books in Cape Charles on Virginia’s Eastern Shore (at the southern tip of the DelMarVa Peninsula). There I found quite a surprise in a small book of Dickinson’s poetry.

While there – in Cape Charles – I also visited one branch of the county’s public library system (housed in an old bank building), and of course, I checked out what they had in the way of Dickinson. 

Below:  The library/former bank is the old building on the far left of the photo.

I will say that at this branch, they did not have any single volumes of her poetry – although the regional library does have some at other branches – but I did check various anthologies to see what they included in the way of Dickinson.  Today, I’ll discuss “The Illustrated Library of World Poetry” – and it’s quite a wild goose chase!

First, the copyright page listed 1970 as the publication date so I assumed I had a relatively modern book; however, the title page states, “Edited and with an Introduction by William Cullen Bryant.” 

Say whhaaa?  Was that even possible?  How old was that dude?

Well, I should have checked right then and there, but I didn’t – I looked into that later - and Bryant was born in 1794 and he died in 1878 – when Emily Dickinson was 48 years old.

No wonder this book included nothing by Dickinson!  BUT – I’m still a bit confused.  Online, I see publications of this book listed as 1995 and 2005, but I can’t find any info as to when it was originally published.  
​
Anyway, I put this book back on the shelf – not noticing that it included only poets from the mid-1880s and before (some as early as the 1600s) – and I moved on to the next anthology – so I’ll have info on that tomorrow!

The pic at the left is a Xerox copy of a photo at the library -- and it was hard to get a good pic due to the glass (and glare) on the frame; however, n this old photo, at the far left, you can see the old bank building -- now the library.