Oxford Book of Modern Verse



The Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892–1935 was a poetry anthology edited by W. B. Yeats, and published in 1936 by Oxford University Press. A long and interesting introductory essay starts from the proposition that the poets included should be all the 'good' ones (implicitly the field is Anglo-Irish poetry, though notably a few Indian poets are there) active since Tennyson's death. In fact the poets chosen by Yeats are notable as an idiosyncratic selection to represent modern verse. The Victorians are much represented, while the war poets from World War I are not. The modernist tendency does not predominate, though it is not ignored; Georgian poetry is covered quite thoroughly, while a Dublin wit like Oliver St. John Gogarty is given much space and praised in the introduction as a great poet.

Yeats was influenced by his personal feelings. Gogarty was a personal friend; he also included poems by Margot Ruddock, with whom he was having a relationship, and other friends such as Shri Purohit Swami. He notes that Rudyard Kipling and Ezra Pound are under-represented because paying their royalties would have cost too much. People have regretted that he did not say which poems he would have added given a free hand.

Poets in the Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892-1935

 * Lascelles Abercrombie
 * W.H. Auden
 * George Barker
 * Julian Bell
 * Hilaire Belloc
 * Laurence Binyon
 * Edmund Blunden
 * Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
 * Gordon Bottomley
 * Thomas Boyd
 * Robert Bridges
 * Rupert Brooke
 * Joseph Campbell
 * Roy Campbell
 * G.K. Chesterton
 * Richard Church
 * Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
 * Padraic Colum
 * Alfred Edgar Coppard
 * Frances Cornford
 * William Henry Davies
 * Edward Davison
 * Walter De La Mare
 * Ernest Dowson
 * John Drinkwater


 * T.S. Eliot
 * Edwin John Ellis
 * William Empson
 * Michael Field
 * James Elroy Flecker
 * John Freeman
 * Manmohan Ghose
 * Wilfrid Gibson
 * Oliver St. John Gogarty
 * Augusta, Lady Gregory
 * Julian Grenfell
 * Thomas Hardy
 * William Ernest Henley
 * Frederick Robert Higgins
 * Ralph Hodgson
 * Gerard Manley Hopkins
 * A.E. Housman
 * Richard Hughes
 * Lionel Johnson
 * James Joyce
 * Rudyard Kipling
 * D. H. Lawrence


 * Cecil Day Lewis
 * Hugh M'Diarmid
 * Thomas MacGreevy
 * Louis MacNeice
 * Charles Madge
 * John Masefield
 * Edward Powys Mathers
 * Alice Meynell
 * Harold Monro
 * Thomas Sturge Moore
 * Henry Newbolt
 * Robert Nichols
 * Frank O'Connor
 * Walter Pater
 * Vivian de Sola Pinto
 * William Plomer
 * Ezra Pound
 * Frederick York Powell
 * Herbert Read
 * Ernest Percival Rhys
 * Michael Roberts
 * Thomas William Hazen Rolleston
 * Margot Ruddock
 * George William Russell
 * Victoria Sackville-West


 * Siegfried Sassoon
 * Geoffrey Scott
 * Edward Shanks
 * Edith Sitwell
 * Sacheverell Sitwell
 * Stephen Spender
 * J.C. Squire
 * William Force Stead
 * James Stephens
 * Leonard Alfred George Strong
 * Frank Pearce Sturm
 * Shri Purohit Swami
 * Arthur Symons
 * John Millington Synge
 * Rabindranath Tagore
 * Edward Thomas
 * Francis Thompson
 * Herbert Trench
 * Walter James Turner
 * Arthur Waley
 * Sylvia Townsend Warner
 * Dorothy Wellesley
 * Oscar Wilde
 * W.B. Yeats