The Oxford Book of English Verse

Suitable for people wanting to study English poetry

Just what i wanted

The current editor has tried to be too comprehensive and the current edition is a big, heavy tome inconvenient for bedside reading which is the reason I bought it. There is a lot of worthy but not outstanding stuff which I skip over in search of the gems of wit and wisdom in which English poetry abounds. The editorship is meticulous nevertheless.In the `To be or not to be' soliloquy in Hamlet he has not missed `Disprized' which many editors let go as `despised' (but he missed `barded' in the opening speech of Richard III.). In summary: Too much Andrew Marvell, not enough Dylan Thomas.

I bought this for my father as a gift to give to my mother. She loves the selection of poems and reads a part of this book every day. They are both elderly now and some of the lines take them back to their younger days, either as adults starting out in the 55 years of marriage or as children reading poetry in school. They have both thoroughly enjoyed this collection and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in reading a wide selection of verse.

A haven't gone right through the book but i'm disappointed with what i've seen as there seems to be a lot of not particularly memorable poems by unknown authors (to be fair, i'd struggle to write a single verse) and several or many poems well known or liked by me are absent, which i could have downloaded from the internet for free.

I wanted the best in English poetry to give my children a new interest, especially during COVID-19 lockdown days. This was not quite as good a selection as I had hoped. Too many of the poems I remembered were not included while too many lesser known (less interesting) poems and extracts from poems were. I suppose a matter of taste, the price is attractive for a weighty tome and you can’t please everyone all the time but I admit to mild disappointment.

A comprehensive collection.

Appears to be a book that will be delved into frequently and one were there will be several well thumbed pages however dust jacket completely torn upon delivery Which is very Dissapointed as it's a lovely cover