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.
Christopher Ricks is Professor of English at Boston University. His publications include 'Keats and Embarrassment' (1984), 'The Force of Poetry' (1987), and 'Beckett's Dying Words' (1993).
