The Book of English Verse

The diverse men and women included in The Book of English Verse (1250-1900) invoke the changing scope of the English language through seven centuries of poetry. It progresses from the Middle English of Chaucer to the Elizabethan sonnets of Shakespeare; it touches on the politics of works by Spenser; and teeters from Christianity to Classical learning in the works of Milton and Marvell. The first of the big commercial anthologies, it demonstrates through its chronology of poets how English poetry turned a corner, sounding less like the collective expression of an oral culture and more like the private lyrical utterance of an individual mind.