Oxford Book of English Verse

The Oxford Book of English Verse most commonly means the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900, an anthology of English poetry that had a substantial influence on popular taste and perception of poetry for at least a generation.

Various successor volumes have subtly differentiated titles.

Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900[]

The original anthology, edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch, was published by Oxford University Press in 1900. In its india-paper form it was carried widely around the British Empire and in war as a 'knapsack book'. It sold close to 500,000 copies in its 1st edition.

The 2nd edition, of 1919, is available online.^[1]

Dedication

"To the President and Fellows and Scholars of Trinity College Oxford / a house of learning; ancient, liberal, humane, and my most kindly nurse"

In popular culture[]

Fictional lawyer Horace Rumpole is known to have this book near at hand at almost all times, and he quotes from many of its poems both in and out of court.

Poets represented[]

Lascelles Abercrombie - Joseph Addison - AE - Mark Akenside - William Alexander, Earl of Stirling - William Allingham - Matthew Arnold - Sir Robert Ayton - Lady Grizel Baillie - Joanna Baillie - Frances Bannerman - Anna Laetitia Barbauld - John Barbour - Richard Barnefield - William Barnes - James Beattie - Francis Beaumont - Sir John Beaumont - Thomas Lovell Beddoes - Henry Charles Beeching - Aphra Behn - Hilaire Belloc - Arthur Christopher Benson - Laurence Binyon - Richard Doddridge Blackmore - William Blake - Edmund Blunden - Wilfrid Scawen Blunt - Gordon Bottomley - Francis William Bourdillon - William Lisle Bowles - Mark Alexander Boyd - Nicholas Breton - Robert Bridges - Alexander Brome - Rupert Brooke - William Broome - Emily Brontë - Thomas Edward Brown - William Browne of Tavistock - Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Robert Browning - Michael Bruce - William Cullen Bryant - John Bunyan - Robert Burns - George Gordon, Lord Byron - Jeremiah John Callanan - Thomas Campbell - Thomas Campion - Thomas Carew - Henry Carey - Bliss Carman - William Cartwright - George Chapman - Thomas Chatterton - Geoffrey Chaucer - G.K. Chesterton - John Clare - Arthur Hugh Clough - Hartley Coleridge - Mary Elizabeth Coleridge - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - William Collins - Padraic Colum - William Congreve - Henry Constable - William Cornish - William Cory - Charles Cotton - Abraham Cowley - William Cowper - George Crabbe - Richard Crashaw - Allan Cunningham - Robert Cunninghame-Grahame of Gartmore - Henry Cust - Samuel Daniel - George Darley - Sir William Davenant - John Davidson - Sir John Davies - William Henry Davies - F. and W. Davison - Thomas Dekker - Walter de la Mare - John Leicester Warren, Lord De Tabley - Aubrey de Vere - Sir Aubrey de Vere - Emily Dickinson - Richard Watson Dixon - Sydney Dobell - Henry Austin Dobson - John Donne - Earl of Dorset - Lord Alfred Douglas - Ernest Dowson - Sir Francis Hastings Doyle - Michael Drayton - William Drummond of Hawthornden - John Dryden - Agnes Mary Frances Duclaux - George du Maurier - William Dunbar - Thomas D'Urfey - Richard Edwardes - Ebenezer Elliott - Jane Elliot - Ralph Waldo Emerson - Sir George Etherege - Richard Fanshawe - Sir Samuel Ferguson - Edward FitzGerald - Thomas Flatman - James Elroy Flecker - Giles Fletcher - John Fletcher - Phineas Fletcher - John Ford - George Fox - Norman Gale - George Gascoigne - John Gay - Oliver St. John Gogarty - Oliver Goldsmith - Sir Edmund Gosse - James Graham, Marquis of Montrose - Thomas Gray - Robert Greene - Julian Grenfell - Fanny Greville - Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke - Gerald Griffin - Nicholas Grimald - William Habington - Thomas Hardy - Bret Harte - Stephen Hawes - Robert Stephen Hawker - Felicia Dorothea Hemans - William Ernest Henley - Robert Henryson - George Herbert - Lord Herbert of Cherbury - Robert Herrick - John Heywood - Thomas Heywood - Katharine Tynan Hinkson - Thomas Hoccleve - Ralph Hodgson - Thomas Hood - James Hogg - Gerard Manley Hopkins - Richard Henry Horne - Lord Houghton - Alfred Edward Housman - Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey - William Dean Howells - Leigh Hunt - Douglas Hyde - Selwyn Image - Jean Ingelow - Richard Jago - James I of Scotland - Lionel Johnson - Samuel Johnson - Ebenezer Jones - Sir William Jones - Ben Jonson - Thomas Jordan - James Joyce - John Keats - John Keble - Henry Clarence Kendall - John Kenyon - Henry King - Charles Kingsley - Rudyard Kipling - Charles Lamb - Mary Lamb - Walter Savage Landor - Andrew Lang - William Langland - Emily Lawless - Richard Le Gallienne - Lady Anne Lindsay - John Gibson Lockhart - Thomas Lodge - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Richard Lovelace - John Lydgate - John Lyly - Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lord Macaulay - George MacDonald - Francis Mahony - James Clarence Mangan - Robert Mannyng of Brunne - Christopher Marlowe - Andrew Marvell - John Masefield - Jasper Mayne - George Meredith - Alice Meynell - John Milton - Alexander Montgomerie - Thomas Moore - T. Sturge Moore - Thomas Osbert Mordaunt - William Morris - Anthony Munday - Carolina, Lady Nairne - Thomas Nashe - Sir Henry Newbolt - Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton - Alfred Noyes - John Oldham - William Oldys - John Boyle O'Reilly - Orinda - Thomas Otway - Wilfred Owen - Isobel Pagan - Herbert Edward Palmer - Sir Gilbert Parker - Thomas Parnell - Coventry Patmore - Thomas Love Peacock - George Peele - Katherine Philips - Eden Phillpotts - William Philpot - Edgar Allan Poe - Alexander Pope - Winthrop Mackworth Praed - Matthew Prior - May Probyn - Bryan Waller Procter - Francis Quarles - Walter Raleigh - Allan Ramsay - Thomas Randolph - William Brighty Rands - John Reynolds - Ernest Rhys - Samuel Rogers - Thomas William Rolleston - Christina Georgina Rossetti - Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Henry Rowe - Richard Rowlands - John Ruskin - Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset - Siegfried Sassoon - Alexander Scott - John Scott of Amwell - Sir Walter Scott - William Bell Scott - Sir Charles Sedley - William Shakespeare - John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire - Percy Bysshe Shelley - William Shenstone - James Shirley - Sir Philip Sidney - Dora Sigerson - John Skelton - Christopher Smart - Walter Chalmers Smith - Tobias George Smollett - Charles Hamilton Sorley - Robert Southey - Edmund Spenser - Thomas Stanley - James Stephens - Robert Louis Stevenson - William Stevenson - William Strode - Sir John Suckling - Earl of Surrey - Algernon Charles Swinburne - Joshua Sylvester - Sir Henry Taylor - Frederick Tennyson - Lord Tennyson - William Makepeace Thackeray - William Thom - Edward Thomas - Francis Thompson - James Thomson (The Seasons) - James Thomson ('B.V.') - Wilfrid Thorley - Edward Thurlow, Lord Thurlow - Thomas Traherne - Herbert Trench - Charles Tennyson Turner - Henry Vaughan - William Sidney Walker - Edmund Waller - William Walsh - Sir William Watson - Isaac Watts - Charles Webbe - John Webster - Charles Wesley - Robert Wever - Joseph Blanco White - Charles Whitehead - Walt Whitman - John Greenleaf Whittier - John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester - Charles Williams - George Wither - Charles Wolfe - Margaret Louisa Woods - William Wordsworth - Sir Henry Wotton - Sir Thomas Wyatt - William Butler Yeats