In the space of four hundred closely printed pages, Mr. Griswold has here brought together some ninety of our female poets, and introduced them with critical and biographical notices. Of all Mr. Griswold’s various works, the present evinces the greatest triumph over difficulties, and best demonstrates the minuteness and the extent of his knowledge of American literature. Very few of the women included in this collection have ever published editions of their writings, and a considerable portion of the verse was published anonymously. The labor, therefore, of collecting the materials both of the biographies and the illustrative extracts, must have been of that arduous and vexatious kind which only enthusiasm for the subject could have sustained. The volume is an important original contribution to the literary history of the country, and nobody, whose mind is not incurably vitiated by prejudice, can make dissimilarity of opinion with regard to some of the judgments expressed in the book, a ground for denying its general ability, honesty and value. Most of the materials are strictly new, and this fact of itself is sufficient to stamp the work with that character which distinguishes books of original research from mere compilations. Mr. Griswold has given us a fine preface, in which he ably vindicates and acutely limits the genius of women. The biographies and extracts which follow, commence with Mrs. Anne Bradstreet and close with Miss Phillips. Between these two he has included an amount of beautiful and touching poetry which will surprise even those who are inclined to take the most elevated view of the intellectual excellence of their countrywomen. We have here the lofty and energetic thought of Miss Townsend, the bright fancy and primitive feeling of Miss Gould, the impassioned imagination and deep discernment of Maria Brooks, the holy and meditative spirit of Mrs. Sigourney, the tender and graceful sentiment of Mrs. Embury; Mrs. Whitman, with her grasp of all literatures, her keen thought which pierces through nature’s most mystical symbols, and her ethereal spirit casting on every object that light “which never was on sea or land;” Mrs. Oakes Smith, with her constant sense of the pure and the good, her daring and shaping imagination, before whose creations and revelations her soul shrinks awed and subdued, and her deep feeling of the spiritual significance of things—a woman worthy to be the companion of Plato; Fanny Osgood, the most brilliant and graceful of poetesses, with her quick decisive sensibility, and her teeming and exhaustless fancy, eloquent of love and romance, and high-heartedness in every relation of life; Miss Lynch, simple, austere, bold, despising ornament as ornament, and keeping her raised eye fixed on the vanishing features of the elusive thought she aims to shape into almost sculptural form; Grace Greenwood, with her fine combination of the tender and the impassioned in feeling, and the