Since Rufus Wilmot Griswold is known chiefly as the infamous literary executor of Edgar Allan Poe and as an anthologist of some good and much bad poetry, his critical views are of interest only to the literary historian. In his own day, he was a prominent figure as an arbiter of literary taste and in a position to affect writers' reputations. Anthologies such as his influential The Poets and Poetry of America (1842) were important to aspiring American writers as a means of reaching public attention and of challenging the recognition given English writers. The editors could seldom indulge in critical discrimination, for they were often nationalists interested in promoting a native American literature, and almost anything at hand was made to serve that interest. Criteria for determining what was truly American were broadly construed. In Griswold's judgment the national literature reflected American landscape and democratic sentiments, and was...