A Little History of Poetry

A vital guide to poetry from ancient times to the present

Poetry is language made special, so that it will be remembered and valued. It does not always work - over the centuries countless thousands of poems have been forgotten. This Little History is about some that have not.

John Carey tells the stories behind the world’s greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly 4,000 years ago to those being written today. Carey looks at poets whose works shape our view of the world - such as Shakespeare, Whitman and Yeats - and more recent poets like Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, and Marianne Moore who have started to question what makes a poem ’great’ in the first place.

Little Histories - Inspiring Guides for Curious Minds

John Carey is Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford. His books include The Essential Paradise Lost and What Good are the Arts?, studies of Donne and Dickens and a biography of William Golding. The Unexpected Professor, his memoir, was a Sunday Times Best Seller.