THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA
The Library of America, a nonprofit publisher and educational outreach entity, was founded in 1979 with grants from the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Although its mission was a well-grounded and no-nonsense business approach to publishing, it essentially was fulfilling a long-held dream by the great critic Edmund Wilson and others. The United States of America, they felt, ought to have a publications series of high standards and high quality of production for its national literature, and it ought to reflect the diversity and traditions of all of its writing.
The first books appeared in 1982, when I first began selling new books in an independent book store here in Carlisle. (The founding of Whistlestop Bookshop was three years away.) I still have my copies of Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman. I won’t tell you how many of the 300+ to date I have acquired, but I am happy to say I never regretted one. The books are remarkably beautiful and efficient and scholarly and finely-made. They are sometimes the only respectable edition available (beware of photo-offset print-on-demand editions!). The accompanying chronologies and notes and textual discussions of every volume are a joy and an education. I cannot praise them too highly.
This listing is what I carry in the store. If you would like other volumes, send me an e-mail or call the store. Enjoy browsing, buying, and owning landmark definitive editions of great writers or great American subjects.
The listings are alphabetical by author except for new or recent anthologies at the top. Older anthologies are at the bottom of the page.
All James Baldwin titles and Ursula K. Le Guin titles are on the respective pages of the authors.
The Rachel Carson Collection [2 volume boxed set]
The Rachel Carson Collection [2 volume boxed set]
All 4 of the major works by America's pioneering environmentalist, including Silent Spring and The Sea Around Us, in one deluxe hardcover boxed set
This deluxe Library of America boxed set edition gathers the essential writings of a pioneering American environmentalist. It presents the complete text of the first edition of Silent Spring, featuring Lois and Louis Darling’s original illustrations, in conjunction with a selection of Carson’s other writings on the environment, including fascinating correspondence with ornithologists, medical researchers, ecologists, biochemists, and other experts that shows Silent Spring taking shape piece-by-piece, like a puzzle or detective story. Also here is Carson's landmark Sea Trilogy, complete with all the original illustrations.
THE RACHEL CARSON COLLECTION includes:
Silent Spring & Other Writings on the Environment (LOA #307)
Silent Spring
Other Writings on the Environment
The Sea Trilogy (LOA #352)
Under the Sea-Wind
The Sea Around Us
The Edge of the Sea
Edited by scientist and author Sandra Steingraber (Living Downstream), each volume contains a 16-page illustration insert, restored original line art, a textual essay, a chronology of Carson's life and career, and detailed notes.