The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse (Oxford Books of Verse)

Book Overview

The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse brings to life a great age of poetry which past generations have viewed with condescension because of its supposed prudery, sentimentality, and lack of irony. Christopher Ricks' selection of 560 poems written by 115 different poets offers our generation a wonderful opportunity to reevaluate the Victorians.
Bringing together the best and most inspiring verse written between 1837 and 1901, this marvelous anthology presents inspiring selections by the great figures--Tennyson, Wordsworth, Browning, Swinburne, and Hopkins among them--as well as the less well-known, but equally rewarding, verse by William Barnes, Coventry Patmore, Elizabeth Siddal, and others. Demonstrating unprecedented respect for the integrity of the poems, Ricks uses excerpts only in cases where the poet provided distinct breaks in a work, and he also reproduces a number of longer masterpieces in their entirety. Readers will find this anthology a source of delight and surprise as they discover that the Victorians are not so very different from ourselves.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0192827782
• ISBN13: 9780192827784
• Release Date: November 1990
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 688 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Yes!

By far, one of the best poetry anthologies I own - and well worth the money. What's so wonderful about Ricks' anthology is it's attention to the greats of Victorian poetry, as well as highlighting some lesser-known poets, like Swinburne, Ruskin, John Henry Newman, and the not-so-widely read poetry of Hardy, Dickens, and Clough. If you're a true fan of this era, you'll appreciate the attention payed to the big greats: Tennyson, Arnold, Hopkins, Browning, and the Rossettis. I give this four-and-a-half stars, actually. There are no annotations in this anthology, which does make reading some of the poetry a bit difficult, especially for a newcomer to the genre/period.