Secondhand Poetry Bargain Book Box SP2861

Secondhand Poetry Bargain Book Box SP2861

Twenty poetry books spanning Tennyson and Emily Dickinson through to Auden and D.H. Lawrence, with oral poetry, war poetry, Romantic poetry, comic verse, and four different Oscar Williams anthologies all represented — alongside Walter de la Mare's Peacock Pie and the inimitable William McGonagall. A box that covers the full range of what poetry can be.

1. A Pocket Book of Modern Verse — ed. Oscar Williams — Williams's popular anthology of a hundred years of English and American poetry, from Walt Whitman to Dylan Thomas — generous, enthusiastic, and endlessly dippable.
2. Tennyson — Penguin Poetry Library, selected by W.E. Williams — A selection from the Victorian poet laureate whose work dominated the English poetic landscape for half a century — In Memoriam, Ulysses, The Lady of Shalott, and the rolling cadences that made Tennyson the most quoted poet of his age.
3. The Terrible Rain: The War Poets 1939-1945 — ed. Brian Gardner — A comprehensive anthology of Second World War poetry, gathering voices that experienced the conflict directly — a companion to Gardner's earlier Great War anthology and essential alongside it.
4. English Romantic Poetry Volume One: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge & Others — ed. Harold Bloom — The first volume of Bloom's landmark Doubleday anthology, presenting the first-generation Romantics with the critical framework that shaped how the period was taught for decades.
5. Peacock Pie — Walter de la Mare, illustrated by Edward Ardizzone — De la Mare's beloved collection of children's poetry — imaginative, musical, slightly uncanny, and wholly unlike any other children's verse in the English language.
6. Verse and Worse: A Private Collection — Arnold Silcock (Faber) — Silcock's enduring Faber anthology of humorous verse — irreverent, eclectic, and reliably entertaining — one of the most popular comic poetry anthologies ever published.
7. D.H. Lawrence: Selected Poems — The Penguin Poets — Sensuous, direct, often startling, and in the nature poems especially, one of the most original voices of the twentieth century — a poet whose full stature is still being recognised.
8. Omar Khayyam — Everyman's Poetry — The Rubaiyat in the Everyman's Poetry format, preserving the verses that FitzGerald's nineteenth-century translation made famous across the English-speaking world.
9. The Penguin Book of Oral Poetry — ed. Ruth Finnegan — Ruth Finnegan's extraordinary anthology drawing on oral traditions from across the world — African praise songs, Native American chant, Norse saga — a book that fundamentally expands what we think poetry is.
10. Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson — The complete surviving poems of one of the most original and unsettling poets in the English language, whose slant rhymes and startling metaphysical leaps make her as modern now as she was radical in her own time.
11. Voices: An Anthology of Poetry and Pictures, the Second Book — ed. Geoffrey Summerfield — The second volume of Summerfield's pioneering Penguin anthology, pairing poems with striking visual images — one of the most influential poetry teaching resources of the 1960s and 70s.
12. Voices: An Anthology of Poetry and Pictures, the Third Book — ed. Geoffrey Summerfield — The third and most ambitious volume, ranging widely across cultures and centuries and including some of the anthology's most unexpected and memorable juxtapositions.
13. Immortal Poems of the English Language — ed. Oscar Williams — Williams's compact survey of the canonical poems that have endured across centuries — a pocket but comprehensive overview of the English poetic tradition.
14. The Penguin Book of Everyday Verse: Social and Documentary Poetry 1250-1916 — ed. David Wright — A remarkable Penguin anthology gathering work songs, political broadsides, and social commentary — the poetry that lived outside the literary canon but captured how people actually lived.
15. The New Pocket Anthology of American Verse — ed. Oscar Williams — Williams's portable and passionate selection of American poetry from colonial times to the mid-twentieth century, reflecting the personal enthusiasm that made him a key populariser of the tradition.
16. The Mentor Book of Major British Poets — ed. Oscar Williams — A fourth Williams anthology covering the British tradition from Blake and Wordsworth through to Browning and Dylan Thomas — enthusiastic, generous, and packed with essential poems.
17. Hilaire Belloc: Collected Verse — The Penguin Poets — The essential Belloc, gathering the comic verse, cautionary tales, and satirical epigrams that made him one of the most quotable writers of the Edwardian era.
18. W.H. Auden — The Penguin Poets, selected by the author — Auden's own selection from his work — the most authoritative possible introduction to the century's most technically accomplished poet.
19. The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse — ed. Ralph Gustafson — Gustafson's anthology presenting a poetic tradition distinct from both its British and American neighbours — vital for anyone who wants to understand the full range of anglophone verse.
20. Last Poetic Gems — William McGonagall — Selections from the Dundee weaver and self-proclaimed poet and tragedian whose cheerfully catastrophic verse has brought joy to readers for well over a century — the perfect antidote to too much serious poetry.