Thousand and One Gems of English Poetry (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Thousand and One Gems of English Poetry

The scope and scale of this collection of English poetry were determined mainly by two ideas first, that certain distinct types of selections might with advantage be combined in one book; and second, that, with the wealth of English poetry to choose from, the value of anthologies is not really in inverse but rather in direct proportion to the quantity of their contents.

The general scheme of the book is to provide a copious selection of English poetry in its various kinds, the historical range being from the fourteenth century to the twentieth. Short poems, mostly lyrics, are naturally the most numerous; there is also a number of extracts of various kinds, a small number in proportion to the whole. More distinctive features of the book are (1) the inclusion of many complete longer poems; and in the case of the more notable poets, the selection of a large body of the work of each - in several instances from one thousand to three thousand lines. It is hoped that even critics to whom small anthologies1 are anathema, because of the fragmentary views they afford of the poets' personalities, will be partly appeased by this latter feature.

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