The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse

Hailed as a major event (John Carey, Sunday Times), a major anthology: one of the best that Oxford has ever produced (James Fenton, The Times), the most important anthology in recent years (The Economist), and indispensable (Kingsley Amis), Roger Lonsdales The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse is now available in a stylishly redesigned reissue. No previous anthology has succeeded in illustrating so thoroughly the kinds of verse actually written in the eighteenth century. The familiar tradition is fully represented by selections from such poets as Pope, Swift, Gray, Smart, Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, and Blake. In addition, the anthology includes verse by many forgotten writers, both men and women, from all levels of society. Although they have never figured in conventional literary history, they wrote humorous, idiosyncratic, and graphic verse about their personal experience and the world around them, in a way that should challenge received ideas about the periods restraints and inhibitions.

Roger Lonsdale is Emeritus Fellow of Balliol and former Professor of English at the University of Oxford.