The Columbia History of British Poetry

Front Cover
Carl R. Woodring, James Shapiro
Columbia University Press, 2007 M09 7 - 732 pages

The Columbia Anthology of British Poetry brings together the most remarkable verse written in the British Isles over the course of the past twelve centuries, offering the greatest diversity of poetic voices in any anthology of its kind.

From Shakespeare's memorable sonnets to Keats's haunting odes to T.S. Eliot's mediations on the conditions of modern life, the collection contains many of the best-loved treasures of British poetry. Longer and much-celebrated poems that rarely find their way into anthologies-including Pope's "Rape of the Lock" and Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"-claim a place in this collection.

Queen Elizabeth I, Anne Killigrew, Aphra Behn, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Felicia Hemans are among dozens of women writers renowned in their own day and now restored to their rightful prominence. Scottish, Welsh, and Irish poets often excluded from anthologies of British poetry are here as well, including such extraordinary voices as Lady Grisell Baillie, Robert Burns, Hugh MacDiarmid, and Seamus Heaney. The finest contemporary poets are fully represented also, from Thom Gunn to Eavan Boland. The result is an amazingly rich and wide-ranging conversation among British poets that transcends the boundaries of time and place.

Carl Woodring and James Shapiro, the team scholars who edited The Columbia History of British Poetry, have written incisive introductions to the careers of the poets, making this the most accessible and comprehensive anthology of British verse in print. Covering the new and the ancient, the classic and the rediscovered, this generous volume reimagines the horizons of British poetry.

 

Contents

II
1
III
23
IV
55
V
81
VI
110
VII
114
VIII
147
IX
171
XVII
349
XVIII
373
XIX
393
XX
420
XXI
446
XXII
473
XXIII
500
XXIV
522

X
197
XI
222
XII
242
XIII
269
XIV
295
XV
309
XVI
321
XXV
545
XXVI
573
XXVII
611
XXVIII
639
XXIX
646
XXX
651
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About the author (2007)

Carl Woodring is George Edward Woodberry Professor of Literature Emeritus at Columbia University. He is the author of such works as Nature Into Art and Politics in English Romantic Poetry, which won the Gauss Award.

James Shapiro is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is author of Rival Playwrights: Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare and Shakespeare and the Jews (Columbia, 1995).

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