Alistair Fowler's celebrated anthology includes generous selections from the work of all the century's major poets, notably Donne, Jonson, Milton, Drayton, Herbert, Marvell, and Dryden. It strikes a balance between Metaphysical wit and intellect and Jonsonian simplicity, while also accommodating hitherto neglected popular verse. The result is a truer, more Catholic representation of seventeenth-century verse than any previous anthology.

No previous anthology has succeeded in illustrating so thoroughly the kinds of verse actually written in the eighteenth century. The familiar tradition is fully represented by selections from such poets as Pope, Swift, Tomson, Gray, Smart, Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, and Blake. In addition, the anthology includes verse by many forgotten writers, both men and women, from all levels of society. Although they have never figured in conventional literary history, they wrote humorous, idiosyncratic, and graphic verse about their personal experience and the world around them, in a way that should challenge received ideas about the period's restraints and inhibitions.

From Shakespeare to Milton to Donne to Dryden, the poets of the seventeenth century produced great triumphs of English verse. Now The New Oxford Book of Seventeenth-Century Verse casts a wider net than ever before, collecting both classic works from the literary canon and the verse of many women, minor poets, and Americans who have been ignored for far too long. Edited by the eminent scholar Alastair Fowler, this is the finest anthology of its kind.

Anthology of about 600 poems from more than 200 twentieth century English poets.