Penguin Book Of Victorian Verse
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, less literary than those from
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''The Penguin Book of Victorian Verse'' (1997)

Edited by Daniel Karlin. The poets included were: William Allingham -
Alexander Anderson Alexander Anderson may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Alexander Anderson (illustrator) (1775–1870), American illustrator * Alexander Anderson (poet) (1845–1909), Scottish poet * Alexander Anderson (cartoonist) (1920–2010), American car ...
- Matthew Arnold -
Alfred Austin Alfred Austin (30 May 1835 – 2 June 1913) was an English poet who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1896, after an interval following the death of Tennyson, when the other candidates had either caused controversy or refused the honour. It was cl ...
- W. E. Aytoun -
Jane Barlow Jane Barlow (17 October 1856 – 17 April 1917) was an Irish people, Irish writer, noted for her novels and poems describing the lives of the Irish peasantry, chiefly about Lisconnel and Ballyhoy, in relation to both landlords and the Great Fami ...
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William Barnes William Barnes (22 February 1801 – 7 October 1886) was an English polymath, writer, poet, philologist, priest, mathematician, engraving artist and inventor. He wrote over 800 poems, some in Dorset dialect, and much other work, including a co ...
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Thomas Lovell Beddoes Thomas Lovell Beddoes (30 June 1803 – 26 January 1849) was an English poet, dramatist and physician. Biography Born in Clifton, Bristol, England, he was the son of Dr. Thomas Beddoes, a friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Anna, sister o ...
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Hilaire Belloc Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (, ; 27 July 187016 July 1953) was a Franco-English writer and historian of the early twentieth century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. H ...
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A. C. Benson Arthur Christopher Benson, (24 April 1862 – 17 June 1925) was an English essayist, poet and academic, and the 28th Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He wrote the lyrics of Edward Elgar’s '' Coronation Ode'', including the words of th ...
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L. S. Bevington Louisa Sarah Bevington (14 May 1845 – 28 November 1895) was an English Anarchism, anarchist, essayist and poet. Among those who attended her funeral was Peter Kropotkin. Early life and works Bevington was born in St John's Hill, Battersea, S ...
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Laurence Binyon Robert Laurence Binyon, CH (10 August 1869 – 10 March 1943) was an English poet, dramatist and art scholar. Born in Lancaster, England, his parents were Frederick Binyon, a clergyman, and Mary Dockray. He studied at St Paul's School, London ...
- Samuel Laman Blanchard -
Mathilde Blind Mathilde Blind (born Mathilda Cohen; 21 March 1841 in Mannheim, Germany – 26 November 1896, in London), was a German-born English poet, fiction writer, biographer, essayist and critic. In the early 1870s she emerged as a pioneering female aest ...
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Robert Bridges Robert Seymour Bridges (23 October 1844 – 21 April 1930) was an English poet who was Poet Laureate from 1913 to 1930. A doctor by training, he achieved literary fame only late in life. His poems reflect a deep Christian faith, and he is ...
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Anne Brontë Anne Brontë (, commonly ; 17 January 1820 – 28 May 1849) was an English novelist and poet, and the youngest member of the Brontë literary family. Anne Brontë was the daughter of Maria (born Branwell) and Patrick Brontë, a poor Irish cl ...
- Charlotte Brontë -
Shirley Brooks Charles William Shirley Brooks (29 April 1816 – 23 February 1874) was an English journalist and novelist. Born in London, he began his career in a solicitor's office. Shortly afterwards he took to writing, and contributed to various per ...
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T. E. Brown Thomas Edward Brown (5 May 183029 October 1897), commonly referred to as T. E. Brown, was a late-Victorian scholar, schoolmaster, poet, and theologian from the Isle of Man. Having achieved a double first at Christ Church, Oxford, and electio ...
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning Elizabeth Barrett Browning (née Moulton-Barrett; 6 March 1806 – 29 June 1861) was an English poet of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime. Born in County Durham, the eldest of 12 children, Elizabet ...
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Caerleon Caerleon (; cy, Caerllion) is a town and community in Newport, Wales. Situated on the River Usk, it lies northeast of Newport city centre, and southeast of Cwmbran. Caerleon is of archaeological importance, being the site of a notable Roman ...
- C. S. Calverley - William Canton -
Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ...
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Elizabeth Charles Elizabeth Rundle Charles (2 January 182828 March 1896) was an English writer. She was born at Tavistock, Devon, the daughter of John Rundle, MP. Some of her youthful poems won the praise of Tennyson, who read them in manuscript. In 1851 she mar ...
- John Clare -
Arthur Hugh Clough Arthur Hugh Clough ( ; 1 January 181913 November 1861) was an English poet, an educationalist, and the devoted assistant to Florence Nightingale. He was the brother of suffragist Anne Clough and father of Blanche Athena Clough who both became p ...
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Hartley Coleridge Hartley Coleridge, possibly David Hartley Coleridge (19 September 1796 – 6 January 1849), was an English poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher. He was the eldest son of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His sister Sara Coleridge was a poet an ...
- Mary E. Coleridge -
Mortimer Collins Edward James Mortimer Collins (29 June 1827 – 28 July 1876) was an English novelist, journalist and poet. Some of his lyrics, with their "light grace, their sparkling wit and their airy philosophy", were described in the 1911 ''Encyclopædia B ...
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Eliza Cook Eliza Cook (24 December 181823 September 1889) was an English author and poet associated with the Chartist movement. She was a proponent of political freedom for women, and believed in the ideology of self-improvement through education, some ...
- Thomas Cooper - William Johnson Cory - John Davidson -
Richard Watson Dixon Richard Watson Dixon (5 May 1833 – 23 January 1900), English poet and divine, son of Dr James Dixon, a Wesleyan minister. Biography He was the eldest son of Dr. James Dixon, a distinguished Wesleyan preacher, by Mary, only daughter of the ...
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Sydney Thompson Dobell Sydney Thompson Dobell (5 April 182422 August 1874) was an English poet and critic, and a member of the so-called Spasmodic school. Biography Dobell was born at Cranbrook, Kent. His father, John Dobell, was a wine merchant and his mother Julie ...
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Digby Mackworth Dolben Digby Augustus Stewart Mackworth Dolben (8 February 1848 – 28 June 1867) was an English poet who died young from drowning. He owes his poetic reputation to his cousin, Robert Bridges, poet laureate from 1913 to 1930, who edited a partial edition ...
- Alfred Domett -
Edward Dowden Edward Dowden (3 May 18434 April 1913) was an Irish critic, professor, and poet. Biography He was the son of John Wheeler Dowden, a merchant and landowner, and was born at Cork, three years after his brother John, who became Bishop of Edinburgh ...
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Ernest Dowson Ernest Christopher Dowson (2 August 186723 February 1900) was an English poet, novelist, and short-story writer who is often associated with the Decadent movement. Biography Ernest Dowson was born in Lee, then in Kent, in 1867. His great-uncle ...
- R. E. Egerton-Warburton - George Eliot -
Ebenezer Elliott Ebenezer Elliott (17 March 1781 – 1 December 1849) was an English poet, known as the ''Corn Law rhymer'' for his leading the fight to repeal the Corn Laws, which were causing hardship and starvation among the poor. Though a factory owner himse ...
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Anne Evans Anne or Ann Evans may refer to: * Ann Evans (midwife) (1840–1916), New Zealand nurse * Anne Evans (poet) (1820–1870), English poet and composer * Anne Evans (arts patron) (1871–1941), art patron in Colorado * Anne Evans (soprano) (born 1941) ...
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Sebastian Evans Sebastian Evans (2 March 1830 – 19 December 1909) was an English journalist and political activist, known also as a man of letters and an artist. He helped to form the National Union of Conservative Associations. Life Born on 2 March 1830 at M ...
- Michael Field - Edward Fitzgerald - David Gray - John Gray - Dora Greenwell -
Thomas Gordon Hake Thomas Gordon Hake (10 March 180911 January 1895) was an English physician and poet. Life Hake was born in Leeds on 10 March 1809, and was descended from an old Devonshire family who had 'lived on the soil for many years without being distingui ...
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John Hanmer John Hanmer may refer to: *John Hanmer (MP died 1604), MP for Flint Boroughs (UK Parliament constituency) *John Hanmer, 1st Baron Hanmer (1809–1881), British politician *John Hanmer (bishop) (1574–1629), Welsh bishop of St. Asaph *Sir John Hanm ...
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Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Word ...
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Frances Ridley Havergal Frances Ridley Havergal (14 December 1836 – 3 June 1879) was an English religious poet and hymnwriter. ''Take My Life and Let it Be'' and ''Thy Life for Me'' (also known as ''I Gave My Life for Thee'') are two of her best known hymns. She also ...
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Robert Stephen Hawker Robert Stephen Hawker (1803–1875) was a British Anglican priest, poet, antiquarian and reputed eccentric, known to his parishioners as Parson Hawker. He is best known as the writer of "The Song of the Western Men" with its chorus line of "An ...
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W. E. Henley William Ernest Henley (23 August 184911 July 1903) was an English poet, writer, critic and editor. Though he wrote several books of poetry, Henley is remembered most often for his 1875 poem " Invictus". A fixture in London literary circles, the ...
- James Henry - Thomas Hood -
Gerard Manley Hopkins Gerard Manley Hopkins (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame placed him among leading Victorian poets. His prosody – notably his concept of sprung rhythm – established him as an innovato ...
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A. E. Housman Alfred Edward Housman (; 26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936) was an English classical scholar and poet. After an initially poor performance while at university, he took employment as a clerk in London and established his academic reputation by pub ...
- Mary Howitt - Leigh Hunt -
Jean Ingelow Jean Ingelow (17 March 1820 – 20 July 1897) was an English poet and novelist, who gained sudden fame in 1863. She also wrote several stories for children. Early life Born in Boston, Lincolnshire on 17 March 1820, Jean Ingelow was the daughter ...
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Lionel Johnson Lionel Pigot Johnson (15 March 1867 – 4 October 1902) was an English poet, essayist, and critic (although he claimed Irish descent and wrote on Celtic themes). Life Johnson was born in Broadstairs, Kent, England in 1867 and educated at Win ...
- Ebenezer Jones - Ernest Jones -
May Kendall May Kendall (born Emma Goldworth Kendall; 1861 – 1943) was an English poet, novelist, and satirist. She is best known as the co-author of the novel ''That Very Mab'' and the poetry collections ''Dreams to Sell'' and ''Songs from Dreamland''. ...
- Harriet Eleanor Hamilton King -
Charles Kingsley Charles Kingsley (12 June 1819 – 23 January 1875) was a broad church priest of the Church of England, a university professor, social reformer, historian, novelist and poet. He is particularly associated with Christian socialism, the working ...
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Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. ...
- Mary Montgomerie Lamb - Letitia Elizabeth Landon -
Walter Savage Landor Walter Savage Landor (30 January 177517 September 1864) was an English writer, poet, and activist. His best known works were the prose ''Imaginary Conversations,'' and the poem "Rose Aylmer," but the critical acclaim he received from contempora ...
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William Larminie William Larminie (1 August 1849 – 19 January 1900) was an Irish poet and folklorist. He was born in Castlebar, County Mayo, of Huguenot descent and was educated at Kingstown School and Trinity College Dublin, from which he graduated in 1871 ...
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Edward Lear Edward Lear (12 May 1812 – 29 January 1888) was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limerick (poetry), limericks, a form he popularised. ...
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Eugene Lee-Hamilton Eugene Lee-Hamilton (6 January 1845 – 9 September 1907) was a late Victorian English poet. His work includes some notable sonnets in the style of Petrarch. He endowed a literary prize administered by Oriel College in Oxford University, wher ...
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Robert Leighton The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of ''Hrōþ, Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory ...
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Amy Levy Amy Judith Levy (10 November 1861 – 9 September 1889) was an English essayist, poet, and novelist best remembered for her literary gifts; her experience as the second Jewish woman at Cambridge University, and as the first Jewish student at N ...
- Caroline Lindsay -
Frederick Locker-Lampson Frederick Locker-Lampson (1821–1895) was an English man of letters, bibliophile and poet. Overview He was born at Greenwich Hospital. His father, who was Civil Commissioner of the Hospital, was Edward Hawke Locker, youngest son of the Captai ...
- Alfred Comyns Lyall -
Robert Bulwer-Lytton Edward Robert Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton, (8 November 183124 November 1891) was an English statesman, Conservative politician and poet who used the pseudonym Owen Meredith. He served as Viceroy of India between 1876 and 1880durin ...
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James Clarence Mangan James Clarence Mangan, born James Mangan ( ga, Séamus Ó Mangáin; 1 May 1803, Dublin – 20 June 1849), was an Irish poet. He freely translated works from German, Turkish, Persian, Arabic, and Irish, with his translations of Goethe gaining sp ...
- Philip Bourke Marston - George Meredith -
Alice Meynell Alice Christiana Gertrude Meynell (née Thompson; 11 October 184727 November 1922) was a British writer, editor, critic, and suffragist, now remembered mainly as a poet. Early years and family Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson was born in ...
- Thomas Miller - F. B. Money-Coutts - Cosmo Monkhouse -
William Morris William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, printer, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He ...
- Arthur Munby -
Robert Fuller Murray Robert Fuller Murray (1863–1894), was a Victorian poet. Although born in the United States, Murray lived most of his life in the United Kingdom, most notably in St Andrews, Scotland. He wrote two books of poetry and was published occasionally in ...
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Constance Naden Constance Caroline Woodhill Naden (24 January 185823 December 1889) was an English writer, poet and philosopher. She studied, wrote and lectured on philosophy and science, alongside publishing two volumes of poetry. Several collected works wer ...
- Edith Nesbit - Henry Newbolt - Eliza Ogilvy -
George Outram George Outram (25 March 1805 – 15 September 1856) was a humorous poet, Scottish advocate, friend of Professor John Wilson, and for some time editor of '' The Herald'' in Glasgow. Life Outram was born on 25 March 1805 the son of Elizabeth ...
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Coventry Patmore Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore (23 July 1823 – 26 November 1896) was an English poet and literary critic. He is best known for his book of poetry ''The Angel in the House'', a narrative poem about the Victorian ideal of a happy marriage. A ...
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Emily Pfeiffer Emily Jane Pfeiffer (26 November 1827 – 23 January 1890, née Davis) was a Welsh poet and philanthropist. She supported women's suffrage and higher education for women, as well as producing feminist poems. Pfeiffer was born Montgomeryshire, bu ...
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Stephen Phillips Stephen Phillips (28 July 1864 – 9 December 1915) was an English poet and dramatist, who enjoyed considerable popularity early in his career. Biography He was born at Somertown near Oxford, the son of the Rev. Stephen Phillips, precentor o ...
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Victor Plarr Victor Gustave Plarr (21 June 1863 – 28 January 1929) was an English poet; he is probably best known for the poem ''Epitaphium Citharistriae''. Life He was born near Strasbourg, France, of a French father from Alsace, Gustave Plarr, and an Eng ...
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May Probyn Juliana Mary Louisa Probyn, known as May Probyn (12 April 1856 – 29 March 1909) was an English poet, one of a group of lively and somewhat political British ''fin de siècle'' poets. She was born in Avranches, France. Her parents were the ...
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Adelaide Anne Procter Adelaide Anne Procter (30 October 1825 – 2 February 1864) was an English poet and philanthropist. Her literary career began when she was a teenager, her poems appearing in Charles Dickens's periodicals ''Household Words'' and '' All the ...
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Bryan Waller Procter Bryan Waller Procter (pseud. Barry Cornwall) (21 November 17875 October 1874) was an English poet who served as a Commissioner in Lunacy. Life and career Born at Leeds, Yorkshire, he was educated at Harrow School, where he had for contemporarie ...
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Dollie Radford Caroline Maitland (1858–1920) was an English poet and writer. She worked under the name "Dollie Radford" after she married Ernest Radford. Life Maitland was born in 1858 and in 1880 she met her future husband in the British Museum Reading Room ...
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William Brighty Rands William Brighty Rands (24 December 1823, Chelsea, London, Chelsea, Middlesex — 23 April 1882 at the age of 58, East Dulwich, London) was a British writer and one of the major authors of nursery rhymes of the Victorian era. He studied from a ...
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William Renton William is a masculine given name of Norman French origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conques ...
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James Logie Robertson James Logie Robertson (18 September 1846 – June 1922) was a literary scholar, editor and author, who also wrote under the pen name Hugh Haliburton. His poems, published regularly in The Scotsman newspaper, were affectionately known as "The H ...
- Mary F. Robinson - William Caldwell Roscoe - William Stewart Rose - Christina G. Rossetti -
George William Russell George William Russell (10 April 1867 – 17 July 1935), who wrote with the pseudonym Æ (often written AE or A.E.), was an Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, painter and Irish nationalist. He was also a writer on mysticism, and a centra ...
- Richard Hill Sandys -
William Bell Scott William Bell Scott (1811–1890) was a Scottish artist in oils and watercolour and occasionally printmaking. He was also a poet and art teacher, and his posthumously published reminiscences give a chatty and often vivid picture of life in the ...
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George Augustus Simcox George Augustus Simcox (18 July 1841 – 1905) was a British classical scholar and poet. He was a Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford. He was educated at the University of Oxford. He was also a critic and busy literary reviewer, in magazines such a ...
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Joseph Skipsey Joseph Skipsey (17 March 1832 – 3 September 1903) was a Northumbrian poet during the Victorian period and one of a number of literary coal miners to be known as 'The Pitman Poet'. Among his best known works is the ballad "The Hartley Ca ...
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Menella Bute Smedley Menella Bute Smedley (1820–1877) was a novelist and poet. A relative of Lewis Carroll, she wrote some minor novels and books of poems, including the anonymous, ''The Story of Queen Isabel, and Other Verses'', 1863. She translated the old German ...
- Alexander Smith - Walter C. Smith - J. K. Stephen -
Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as ''Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll a ...
- Henry Septimus Sutton -
Algernon Charles Swinburne Algernon Charles Swinburne (5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909) was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He wrote several novels and collections of poetry such as ''Poems and Ballads'', and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition ...
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Arthur Symons Arthur William Symons (28 February 186522 January 1945) was a British poet, critic and magazine editor. Life Born in Milford Haven, Wales, to Cornish parents, Symons was educated privately, spending much of his time in France and Italy. In 1884 ...
- Henry Taylor - Alfred Tennyson - William Makepeace Thackeray - William Thom - Francis Thompson - James Thomson - John Todhunter - Charles Turner - John Leicester Warren - Rosamund Marriott Watson - William Watson -
Augusta Webster Augusta Webster (30 January 1837 – 5 September 1894) born in Poole, Dorset as Julia Augusta Davies, was an England, English poet, dramatist, essayist, and translation, translator. Biography Augusta was the daughter of Vice-admiral George Dav ...
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Charles Whitehead Charles Whitehead (1804 – 5 July 1862) was an English poet, novelist and dramatist. Whitehead was born in London, the eldest son of a wine merchant. His most popular works were: ''The Solitary'' (1831), a poem, ''The Autobiography of Jack Ketc ...
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Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
- James Chapman Woods -
William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Ballads'' (1798). Wordsworth's ' ...
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W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...


''Poetry of the Nineties'' (1970)

Edited by R. K. R. Thornton. The poets included were:
Alfred Austin Alfred Austin (30 May 1835 – 2 June 1913) was an English poet who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1896, after an interval following the death of Tennyson, when the other candidates had either caused controversy or refused the honour. It was cl ...
- John Barlas - Aubrey Beardsley -
Laurence Binyon Robert Laurence Binyon, CH (10 August 1869 – 10 March 1943) was an English poet, dramatist and art scholar. Born in Lancaster, England, his parents were Frederick Binyon, a clergyman, and Mary Dockray. He studied at St Paul's School, London ...
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Olive Custance Olive Eleanor Custance (7 February 1874 – 12 February 1944), also known as Lady Alfred Douglas, was an English poet and wife of Lord Alfred Douglas. She was part of the aesthetic movement of the 1890s, and a contributor to '' The Yellow ...
- John Davidson - R. W. Dixon -
Lord Alfred Douglas Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (22 October 1870 – 20 March 1945), also known as Bosie Douglas, was an English poet and journalist, and a lover of Oscar Wilde. At Oxford he edited an undergraduate journal, ''The Spirit Lamp'', that carried a homoer ...
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Ernest Dowson Ernest Christopher Dowson (2 August 186723 February 1900) was an English poet, novelist, and short-story writer who is often associated with the Decadent movement. Biography Ernest Dowson was born in Lee, then in Kent, in 1867. His great-uncle ...
- Michael Field - John Gray - G. A. Greene -
Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Word ...
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W. E. Henley William Ernest Henley (23 August 184911 July 1903) was an English poet, writer, critic and editor. Though he wrote several books of poetry, Henley is remembered most often for his 1875 poem " Invictus". A fixture in London literary circles, the ...
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Herbert Horne Herbert Percy Horne (1864 in London – 1916 in Florence, Italy) was an English poet, architect, typographer and designer, art historian and antiquarian. He was an associate of the Rhymers' Club in London. He edited the magazines ''The Centur ...
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A. E. Housman Alfred Edward Housman (; 26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936) was an English classical scholar and poet. After an initially poor performance while at university, he took employment as a clerk in London and established his academic reputation by pub ...
- Selwyn Image -
Lionel Johnson Lionel Pigot Johnson (15 March 1867 – 4 October 1902) was an English poet, essayist, and critic (although he claimed Irish descent and wrote on Celtic themes). Life Johnson was born in Broadstairs, Kent, England in 1867 and educated at Win ...
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Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. ...
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Richard Le Gallienne Richard Le Gallienne (20 January 1866 – 15 September 1947) was an English author and poet. The British-American actress Eva Le Gallienne (1899–1991) was his daughter by his second marriage to Danish journalist Julie Nørregaard (1863–1942) ...
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Eugene Lee-Hamilton Eugene Lee-Hamilton (6 January 1845 – 9 September 1907) was a late Victorian English poet. His work includes some notable sonnets in the style of Petrarch. He endowed a literary prize administered by Oriel College in Oxford University, wher ...
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Alice Meynell Alice Christiana Gertrude Meynell (née Thompson; 11 October 184727 November 1922) was a British writer, editor, critic, and suffragist, now remembered mainly as a poet. Early years and family Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson was born in ...
- Henry Newbolt - Vincent O'Sullivan -
Stephen Phillips Stephen Phillips (28 July 1864 – 9 December 1915) was an English poet and dramatist, who enjoyed considerable popularity early in his career. Biography He was born at Somertown near Oxford, the son of the Rev. Stephen Phillips, precentor o ...
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Victor Plarr Victor Gustave Plarr (21 June 1863 – 28 January 1929) was an English poet; he is probably best known for the poem ''Epitaphium Citharistriae''. Life He was born near Strasbourg, France, of a French father from Alsace, Gustave Plarr, and an Eng ...
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Dollie Radford Caroline Maitland (1858–1920) was an English poet and writer. She worked under the name "Dollie Radford" after she married Ernest Radford. Life Maitland was born in 1858 and in 1880 she met her future husband in the British Museum Reading Room ...
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Ernest Radford Ernest William Radford (1857–1919) was an English poet, critic and socialist. He was a follower of William Morris, and one of the organisers in the Arts and Crafts Movement; he acted as secretary to the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. He w ...
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Ernest Rhys Ernest Percival Rhys ( ; 17 July 1859 – 25 May 1946) was a Welsh-English writer, best known for his role as founding editor of the Everyman's Library series of affordable classics. He wrote essays, stories, poetry, novels and plays. Early life ...
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Arthur Symons Arthur William Symons (28 February 186522 January 1945) was a British poet, critic and magazine editor. Life Born in Milford Haven, Wales, to Cornish parents, Symons was educated privately, spending much of his time in France and Italy. In 1884 ...
- Francis Thompson -
Theodore Wratislaw Theodore William Graf Wratislaw (1871–1933) was a British poet and civil servant. He was educated at Rugby School from 1885–1888; he entered his father's office and in 1893 passed his solicitor's final exams. After 1895 he worked as a solicitor ...
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W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...


''Poetry of the Thirties'' (1964)

Edited by
Robin Skelton Robin Skelton (12 October 1925 – 22 August 1997) was a British-born academic, writer, poet, and anthologist. Biography Born in Easington, East Riding of Yorkshire, Easington, Yorkshire, Skelton was educated at the University of Leeds and Cambr ...
. The poets included were:
Kenneth Allott Kenneth Cyril Bruce Allott (29 August 1912 – 23 May 1973) was an Anglo-Irish poet and academic, and authority on Matthew Arnold. Life Allott was the elder son of Hubert Cyril Willoughby Allott and his wife Rose (née Finlay).Ian Sansom, ‘All ...
- W. H. Auden - George Barker -
Julian Bell Julian Heward Bell (4 February 1908 – 18 July 1937) was an English poet, and the son of Clive and Vanessa Bell (who was the elder sister of Virginia Woolf). The writer Quentin Bell was his younger brother and the writer and painter Angelica ...
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John Betjeman Sir John Betjeman (; 28 August 190619 May 1984) was an English poet, writer, and broadcaster. He was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death. He was a founding member of The Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture, ...
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Ronald Bottrall (Francis James) Ronald Bottrall (2 September 1906, Camborne, Cornwall – 25 June 1989) was a Cornish poet. He was praised highly by F.R. Leavis, Anthony Burgess and Martin Seymour-Smith, and deprecated by Ian Hamilton and Martin Amis. Bottral ...
- Norman Cameron -
Christopher Caudwell Christopher Caudwell was the pseudonym of Christopher St John Sprigg (20 October 1907 – 13 February 1937), a British Marxist writer, literary critic, intellectual and activist. Life He was born into a Roman Catholic family in London, Eng ...
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John Cornford Rupert John Cornford (27 December 1915 – 28 December 1936) was an English poet and communist. During the first year of the Spanish Civil War, he was a member of the POUM militia and later the International Brigades. He died while fighting a ...
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Hugh Sykes Davies Hugh Sykes Davies (17 August 1909 – 6 June 1984)Clifford Dyment - William Empson - Gavin Ewart - Edgar Foxall -
Roy Fuller Roy Broadbent Fuller CBE (11 February 1912 – 27 September 1991) was an English writer, known mostly as a poet. He was born at Failsworth, Lancashire to lower-middle-class parents Leopold Charles Fuller and his wife Nellie (1888–1949; née ...
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David Gascoyne David Gascoyne (10 October 1916 – 25 November 2001) was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement, in particular the British Surrealist Group. Additionally he translated work by French surrealist poets. Early life and surrealis ...
- Geoffrey Grigson -
Bernard Gutteridge Bernard Hugh Gutteridge (1916–1985) was an English poet, novelist, and playwright. He is primarily known for his war poems, considered "verse-journalism of a very high order" by Vernon Scannell. Early life and education Son of Capt. Bernar ...
- Robert Hamer -
Rayner Heppenstall John Rayner Heppenstall (27 July 1911 in Lockwood, Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England – 23 May 1981 in Deal, Kent, England) was a British novelist, poet, diarist, and a BBC radio producer.John Wakeman, ''World Authors 1950-1970 : a companion volu ...
- Peter Hewitt -
Laurie Lee Laurence Edward Alan "Laurie" Lee, MBE (26 June 1914 – 13 May 1997) was an English poet, novelist and screenwriter, who was brought up in the small village of Slad in Gloucestershire. His most notable work is the autobiographical trilogy ...
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John Lehmann Rudolf John Frederick Lehmann (2 June 1907 – 7 April 1987) was an English poet and man of letters. He founded the periodicals ''New Writing'' and ''The London Magazine'', and the publishing house of John Lehmann Limited. Biography Born in ...
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C. Day-Lewis Cecil Day-Lewis (or Day Lewis; 27 April 1904 – 22 May 1972), often written as C. Day-Lewis, was an Irish-born British poet and Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Bla ...
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Louis MacNeice Frederick Louis MacNeice (12 September 1907 – 3 September 1963) was an Irish poet and playwright, and a member of the Auden Group, which also included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. MacNeice's body of work was widely a ...
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Charles Madge Charles Henry Madge (10 October 1912 – 17 January 1996) was an English poet, journalist and sociologist, now most remembered as a founder of Mass-Observation.Philip Bounds, ''Orwell and Marxism: the political and cultural thinking of George Orw ...
- H. B. Mallalieu -
Philip O'Connor __NOTOC__ __NOTOC__ Philip Marie Constant Bancroft O'Connor (8 September 1916 – 29 May 1998) was a British writer and surrealist poet, who also painted. He was one of the 'Wheatsheaf writers' of 1930s Fitzrovia (who took their name from a pub). ...
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Clere Parsons Clere Parsons (1908 - 1931) was an English poet, born in India. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, Christ Church, University of Oxford, and edited the 1928 edition of ''Oxford Poetry''. His only collection, ''Poems'', was published after his ...
- Geoffrey Parsons -
F. T. Prince Frank Templeton Prince (13 September 1912 – 7 August 2003) was a British poet and academic, known generally for his best-known poem ''Soldiers Bathing'', written during the Second World War in 1942, which has been frequently included in antholog ...
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John Pudney John Sleigh Pudney (19 January 1909 – 10 November 1977) was a British poet, journalist and author. He was known especially for his popular poetry written during the Second World War, but he also wrote novels, short stories and children's fict ...
- Henry Reed - Anne Ridler - Michael Roberts - Roger Roughton -
Francis Scarfe Francis Harold Scarfe (1911–1986) was an English poet, critic and novelist, who became an academic, translator and Director of the British Institute in Paris. He was born in South Shields; he was brought up from a young age at the Royal Mer ...
- John Short - Bernard Spencer - Stephen Spender -
Randall Swingler Randall Carline Swingler MM (28 May 1909 – 19 June 1967) was an English poet, writing extensively in the 1930s in the communist interest. Early life and education His was a prosperous upper middle class Anglican family in Aldershot, with an ...
- Julian Symons -
Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Under ...
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Ruthven Todd Ruthven Campbell Todd (pronounced 'riven') (14 June 1914 – 11 October 1978) was a Scottish poet, artist and novelist, best known as an editor of the works of William Blake, and expert on his printing techniques. During the 1940s he also wrote d ...
- Rex Warner -
Vernon Watkins Vernon Phillips Watkins (27 June 1906 – 8 October 1967) was a Welsh poet and translator. His headmaster at Repton was Geoffrey Fisher, who became Archbishop of Canterbury. Despite his parents being Nonconformists, Watkins' school experiences ...


''The Penguin Book of Spanish Civil War Verse'' (1980)

Edited by
Valentine Cunningham Valentine David Cunningham, OBE, MA, DPhil (Oxon), (born October 28, 1944) is a retired professor of English language and literature at the University of Oxford, and emeritus fellow in English literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford Corpu ...
. The poets and a few writers included were:
Valentine Ackland Valentine Ackland (born Mary Kathleen Macrory Ackland; 20 May 1906 – 9 November 1969) was an English poet, and life partner of novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner. Their relationship was strained by Ackland’s infidelities and alcoholism, but s ...
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Rafael Alberti Rafael Alberti Merello (16 December 1902 – 28 October 1999) was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27. He is considered one of the greatest literary figures of the so-called ''Silver Age'' of Spanish Literature, and he won numerou ...
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Manuel Altolaguirre Manuel Altolaguirre (29 June 1905 – 26 July 1959) was a Spanish poet, an editor, publisher, and printer of poetry, and a member of the Generation of '27. Biography Born in the Andalusia city of Málaga in 1905, Altolaguirre's collaborative poets ...
- W. H. Auden - George Barker -
Clive Branson Clive Ali Chimmo Branson (1907 – 25 February 1944) was an English artist and poet, and an active communist in the 1930s. A number of his paintings are in the Tate Gallery. His wife was Noreen Branson (16 May 1910 – 25 October 2003). Their da ...
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J. Bronowski Jacob Bronowski (18 January 1908 – 22 August 1974) was a Polish-British mathematician and philosopher. He was known to friends and professional colleagues alike by the nickname Bruno. He is best known for developing a humanistic approach to sc ...
- Albert Brown - Roy Campbell - Maurice Carpenter -
Christopher Caudwell Christopher Caudwell was the pseudonym of Christopher St John Sprigg (20 October 1907 – 13 February 1937), a British Marxist writer, literary critic, intellectual and activist. Life He was born into a Roman Catholic family in London, Eng ...
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Richard Church Richard Church may refer to: *Richard Church (general) (1784–1873), Irish military officer in the British and Greek army *Richard William Church (1815–1890), nephew of the general, Dean of St Paul's *Richard Church (poet) (1893–1972), English ...
- Elisabeth Cluer -
John Cornford Rupert John Cornford (27 December 1915 – 28 December 1936) was an English poet and communist. During the first year of the Spanish Civil War, he was a member of the POUM militia and later the International Brigades. He died while fighting a ...
- Nancy Cunard - Charles Donnelly - Eric Edney - A. M. Elliott - Redmayne Fitzgerald - Edgar Foxall - Francis Fuentes -
Roy Fuller Roy Broadbent Fuller CBE (11 February 1912 – 27 September 1991) was an English writer, known mostly as a poet. He was born at Failsworth, Lancashire to lower-middle-class parents Leopold Charles Fuller and his wife Nellie (1888–1949; née ...
- R. Gardner -
Pedro Garfias Pedro Garfias Zurita (May 27, 1901 – August 9, 1967) was a Spanish poet. Garfias was born in Salamanca, Spain, but spent his childhood and youth in the Andalusian cities of Seville and Córdoba. In 1918 he moved to Madrid in order to study La ...
- Geoffrey Grigson - Julio D. Guillén -
Bernard Gutteridge Bernard Hugh Gutteridge (1916–1985) was an English poet, novelist, and playwright. He is primarily known for his war poems, considered "verse-journalism of a very high order" by Vernon Scannell. Early life and education Son of Capt. Bernar ...
- Hans Haflin -
Charlotte Haldane Charlotte Haldane (; 27 April 1894 – 16 March 1969) was a British feminist writer.Elizabeth Russell, "The Loss of the Feminine Principle in Charlotte Haldane's ''Man's World'' and Katherine Burdekin's "Swastika Night" in Lucie Armitt, ''Where n ...
- J. C. Hall - Bill Harrington -
Margot Heinemann Margot Claire Heinemann (18 November 1913 – 10 June 1992) was a British Marxist writer, drama scholar, and leading member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). Early life She was born at 89 Priory Road, West Hampstead, London NW ...
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J. F. Hendry James Findlay Hendry (12 September 1912 – 17 December 1986) was a Scottish poet known also as an editor and writer. He was born in Glasgow, and read Modern Languages at the University of Glasgow. During World War II he served in the Royal Arti ...
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Miguel Hernández Miguel Hernández Gilabert (30 October 1910 – 28 March 1942 ) was a 20th-century Spanish-language poet and playwright associated with the Generation of '27 and the Generation of '36 movements. Born and raised in a family of low resources, h ...
- Brian Howard - T. A. R. Hyndman - Luis Perez Infante - W. B. Keal - L. Kendall - H. M. King - A. S. Knowland -
Laurie Lee Laurence Edward Alan "Laurie" Lee, MBE (26 June 1914 – 13 May 1997) was an English poet, novelist and screenwriter, who was brought up in the small village of Slad in Gloucestershire. His most notable work is the autobiographical trilogy ...
- John Lepper -
C. Day-Lewis Cecil Day-Lewis (or Day Lewis; 27 April 1904 – 22 May 1972), often written as C. Day-Lewis, was an Irish-born British poet and Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Bla ...
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Jack Lindsay Jack Lindsay (20 October 1900 – 8 March 1990) was an Australian-born writer, who from 1926 lived in the United Kingdom, initially in Essex. He was born in Melbourne, but spent his formative years in Brisbane. He was the eldest son of Norman L ...
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F. L. Lucas Frank Laurence Lucas (28 December 1894 – 1 June 1967) was an English classical scholar, literary critic, poet, novelist, playwright, political polemicist, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and intelligence officer at Bletchley Park during ...
- Antonio García Luque - Somhairle Macalastair -
Hugh MacDiarmid Christopher Murray Grieve (11 August 1892 – 9 September 1978), best known by his pen name Hugh MacDiarmid (), was a Scottish poet, journalist, essayist and political figure. He is considered one of the principal forces behind the Scottish Rena ...
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Donagh MacDonagh Donagh MacDonagh (22 November 1912 – 1 January 1968) was an Irish writer, judge, presenter, broadcaster, and playwright. Personal life MacDonagh was born in Dublin on St Cecilia's Day in 1912. He was still a young child when his father Th ...
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Antonio Machado Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz (26 July 1875 – 22 February 1939), known as Antonio Machado, was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation ...
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Louis MacNeice Frederick Louis MacNeice (12 September 1907 – 3 September 1963) was an Irish poet and playwright, and a member of the Auden Group, which also included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. MacNeice's body of work was widely a ...
- H. B. Mallalieu -
Ewart Milne Ewart Milne (25 May 1903 – 14 January 1987) was an Irish poet who described himself on various book jackets as "a sailor before the mast, ambulance driver and courier during the Spanish Civil War, a land worker and estate manager in England du ...
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Pablo Neruda Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (; ), was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Nerud ...
- T. E. Nicholas -
George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitar ...
- Aileen Palmer - Felix Paredes - Geoffrey Parsons - Herbert L. Peacock - José Herrera Petere - Plá y Bertran - Kathleen Raine -
Herbert Read Sir Herbert Edward Read, (; 4 December 1893 – 12 June 1968) was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read ...
- Stanley Richardson -
Edgell Rickword John Edgell Rickword, MC (22 October 1898 – 15 March 1982) was an English poet, critic, journalist and literary editor. He became one of the leading communist intellectuals active in the 1930s. Early life He was born in Colchester, Essex, ...
- J. T. Roderick - Jacques Roumain - Sagittarius -
Blanaid Salkeld Blánaid Salkeld (born Florence Ffrench Mullen; 1880 – 1959) was an Irish poet, dramatist, actor, and publisher, whose well-known literary salon was attended by, among others, Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O'Brien. Early life and family Salkeld ...
- Zofia Schleyen - Bernard Spencer - H. G. Sutcliffe - Luis de Tapia -
Ruthven Todd Ruthven Campbell Todd (pronounced 'riven') (14 June 1914 – 11 October 1978) was a Scottish poet, artist and novelist, best known as an editor of the works of William Blake, and expert on his printing techniques. During the 1940s he also wrote d ...
- Miles Tomalin - González Tuñón -
Lorenzo Varela Xesús Lorenzo Varela Vázquez (August 10, 1917 in Havana – November 25, 1978 in Madrid) was a Galician poet. Life Varela was born in a boat, while his parents, emigrants from Galicia, were going to Havana, Cuba. Some people consider it to ...
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José Moreno Villa José Moreno Villa (16 February 1887, Málaga – 25 April 1955, México) was a Spanish poet and member of the Generation of '27. He was a man of many talents: narrator, essayist, literary critic, artist, painter, columnist, researcher, ar ...
- Rex Warner -
Sylvia Townsend Warner Sylvia Nora Townsend Warner (6 December 1893 – 1 May 1978) was an English novelist, poet and musicologist, known for works such as ''Lolly Willowes'', '' The Corner That Held Them'', and ''Kingdoms of Elfin''. Life Sylvia Townsend Warner wa ...
- Tom Wintringham -
L. J. Yates Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...


''Poetry of the Forties'' (1968)

Edited by Robin Skelton. The poets included were:
Drummond Allison (John) Drummond Allison (1921 – 2 December 1943) was an English war poet of the Second World War. He was born in Caterham, Surrey, and educated at Bishop's Stortford College and at Queen's College, Oxford. After training at the Royal Militar ...
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Kenneth Allott Kenneth Cyril Bruce Allott (29 August 1912 – 23 May 1973) was an Anglo-Irish poet and academic, and authority on Matthew Arnold. Life Allott was the elder son of Hubert Cyril Willoughby Allott and his wife Rose (née Finlay).Ian Sansom, ‘All ...
- Patrick Anderson - W. H. Auden - George Barker -
John Bayliss John Bayliss (1919–2008) was a British poet and significant literary editor of the World War II period; later in life, he became a civil servant. He was born in Gloucestershire, and was an undergraduate at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. He ...
- William Bell - Peter Black - George Bruce - Demetrios Capetanakis - Leonard Clark -
Alex Comfort Alexander Comfort (10 February 1920 – 26 March 2000) was a British scientist and physician known best for his nonfiction sex manual, ''The Joy of Sex'' (1972). He was an author of both fiction and nonfiction, as well as a gerontologist, ...
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Dorian Cooke Dorian Cooke (25 December 1916 - 18 September 2005) was a poet, MI6 operative, and head of the Yugoslav section at the BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious g ...
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R. N. Currey Ralph Nixon Currey (14 December 1907 – 18 November 2001) was a South African born poet, who wrote in English. Life He was born in Mafeking, South Africa, the son of John Currey (1871–1959) and his wife Edith Vinnicombe (1881–1959). His fathe ...
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Paul Dehn Paul Edward Dehn (pronounced "Dain"; 5 November 1912 – 30 September 1976) was a British screenwriter, best known for '' Goldfinger'', '' The Spy Who Came in from the Cold'', ''Planet of the Apes'' sequels and ''Murder on the Orient Express''. ...
- Patric Dickinson - Keith Douglas - Lawrence Durrell -
D. J. Enright Dennis Joseph Enright Order of the British Empire, OBE FRSL (11 March 1920 – 31 December 2002) was a British academic, poet, novelist and critic. He authored ''Academic Year'' (1955), ''Memoirs of a Mendicant Professor'' (1969) and a wide ran ...
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Robin Fedden Henry Robin Romilly Fedden, CBE, (1908–1977) was an English writer, diplomat and mountaineer. He was the son of artist Romilly Fedden and novelist Katherine Waldo Douglas. Raised mostly in Chantemesle, France, Fedden went to Cambridge Universi ...
- G. S. Fraser - Ernest Frost -
Roy Fuller Roy Broadbent Fuller CBE (11 February 1912 – 27 September 1991) was an English writer, known mostly as a poet. He was born at Failsworth, Lancashire to lower-middle-class parents Leopold Charles Fuller and his wife Nellie (1888–1949; née ...
- Roland Gant -
Wrey Gardiner Charles Wrey Gardiner (1901 – 13 March 1981) was an English writer and poet, editor and publisher, born in Plymouth. Gardiner was a noted and well-connected literary figure, particularly in London in the years around Second World War, though ...
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David Gascoyne David Gascoyne (10 October 1916 – 25 November 2001) was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement, in particular the British Surrealist Group. Additionally he translated work by French surrealist poets. Early life and surrealis ...
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W. S. Graham William Sydney Graham (19 November 1918 – 9 January 1986) was a Scottish poet, who was often associated with Dylan Thomas and the neo-romantic group of poets. Graham's poetry was mostly overlooked in his lifetime; however, partly thanks to th ...
- K. R. Gray -
Bernard Gutteridge Bernard Hugh Gutteridge (1916–1985) was an English poet, novelist, and playwright. He is primarily known for his war poems, considered "verse-journalism of a very high order" by Vernon Scannell. Early life and education Son of Capt. Bernar ...
- Michael Hamburger - John Heath-Stubbs - Alexander Henderson -
J. F. Hendry James Findlay Hendry (12 September 1912 – 17 December 1986) was a Scottish poet known also as an editor and writer. He was born in Glasgow, and read Modern Languages at the University of Glasgow. During World War II he served in the Royal Arti ...
- John Jarmain -
Seán Jennett Seán Jennett (12 November 1912 – 1981), also Sean Jennet, was a British typographer, book editor, and author of travel books. He was also a published poet. A copyright registration of 1943 describes as a pseudonym, giving his name as John C ...
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Sidney Keyes Sidney Arthur Kilworth Keyes (27 May 1922 – 29 April 1943) was an English poet of World War II. Life Early years and education Keyes was born on 27 May 1922. His mother died shortly afterwards and he was raised by his paternal grandparent ...
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Francis King Francis Henry King (4 March 19233 July 2011) Ion Trewin and Jonathan Fryer"Obituary: Francis King" ''The Guardian'', 3 July 2011. was a British novelist and short story writer. He worked for the British Council for 15 years, with positions i ...
- James Kirkup -
Christopher Lee Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee (27 May 1922 – 7 June 2015) was an English actor and singer. In a long career spanning more than 60 years, Lee often portrayed villains, and appeared as Count Dracula in seven Hammer Horror films, ultimat ...
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Laurie Lee Laurence Edward Alan "Laurie" Lee, MBE (26 June 1914 – 13 May 1997) was an English poet, novelist and screenwriter, who was brought up in the small village of Slad in Gloucestershire. His most notable work is the autobiographical trilogy ...
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Patrick Leigh Fermor Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor (11 February 1915 – 10 June 2011) was an English writer, scholar, soldier and polyglot. He played a prominent role in the Cretan resistance during the Second World War, and was widely seen as Britain's greates ...
- Alun Lewis -
C. Day-Lewis Cecil Day-Lewis (or Day Lewis; 27 April 1904 – 22 May 1972), often written as C. Day-Lewis, was an Irish-born British poet and Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Bla ...
- Reg Levy -
Robert Liddell (John) Robert Liddell (13 October 1908 – 23 July 1992) was an English literary critic, biographer, novelist, travel writer and poet. Life Liddell was born at Tunbridge Wells, England, the elder son of Major John Stewart Liddell, CMG, DSO, w ...
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Emanuel Litvinoff Emanuel Litvinoff (5 May 1915 – 24 September 2011) was a British writer and well-known figure in Anglo-Jewish literature, known for novels, short stories, poetry, plays and human rights campaigning. Early years Litvinoff's early years in what ...
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Norman MacCaig Norman Alexander MacCaig DLitt (14 November 1910 – 23 January 1996) was a Scottish poet and teacher. His poetry, in modern English, is known for its humour, simplicity of language and great popularity. Life Norman Alexander MacCaig was born ...
- Neil McCallum -
Louis MacNeice Frederick Louis MacNeice (12 September 1907 – 3 September 1963) was an Irish poet and playwright, and a member of the Auden Group, which also included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. MacNeice's body of work was widely a ...
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Roland Mathias Roland Glyn Mathias (4 September 1915 – 16 August 2007) was a Welsh writer, known for his poetry and short stories. He was also a literary critic, and responsible with Raymond Garlick for the success of the literary magazine ''Dock Leaves'' (f ...
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J. S. Mollison ''J. The Jewish News of Northern California'', formerly known as ''Jweekly'', is a weekly print newspaper in Northern California, with its online edition updated daily. It is owned and operated by San Francisco Jewish Community Publications In ...
- James Monahan -
Jane Moore Jane Moore (born 17 May 1962) is an English journalist, author and television presenter, best known as a columnist for '' The Sun'' newspaper and as a panellist and anchor on the ITV lunchtime chat show ''Loose Women'' between 1999 and 2002, ret ...
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Nicholas Moore Nicholas Moore (16 November 1918 – 26 January 1986) was an English poet, associated with the New Apocalyptics in the 1940s, whose reputation stood as high as Dylan Thomas’s. He later dropped out of the literary world. Biography Moore was ...
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Norman Nicholson Norman Cornthwaite Nicholson (8 January 1914 – 30 May 1987) was an English poet associated with the Cumbrian town of Millom. His poetry is noted for local concerns, straightforward language, and elements of common speech. Although known chief ...
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Julian Orde Julian Orde (31 December 1917 – 1974) was a female English poet, writer and actor. Family background Orde was the eldest child of war artist Cuthbert Orde and Lady Eileen Wellesley, daughter of the 4th Duke of Wellington. The name Julian had ...
- David Paul -
Mervyn Peake Mervyn Laurence Peake (9 July 1911 – 17 November 1968) was an English writer, artist, poet, and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the '' Gormenghast'' books. The four works were part of what Peake conceived ...
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F. T. Prince Frank Templeton Prince (13 September 1912 – 7 August 2003) was a British poet and academic, known generally for his best-known poem ''Soldiers Bathing'', written during the Second World War in 1942, which has been frequently included in antholog ...
- Kathleen Raine - Henry Reed - Anne Ridler - Iver Roberts-Jones -
W. R. Rodgers William Robert Rodgers (1909 – 1969), known as Bertie, and born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, was probably best known as a poet, but was also a prose essayist, a book reviewer, a radio broadcaster and script writer, a lecturer and, latterly, ...
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Alan Rook (William) Alan Rook OBE (1909 – 1990) was a British Cairo poet and edited the 1936 issue of ''New Oxford Poetry''. As a soldier In the Second World War Rook served as a Lieutenant anti-aircraft gunner with the 6th A.A. Division of the Royal Art ...
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Alan Ross Alan John Ross (6 May 1922 – 14 February 2001) was a British poet, writer, editor and publisher. Early years Ross was born in Calcutta, India, son of John Brackenridge Ross, CBE, a former Lieutenant in the Indian Army Reserve ( Supply and T ...
- Vernon Scannell -
Francis Scarfe Francis Harold Scarfe (1911–1986) was an English poet, critic and novelist, who became an academic, translator and Director of the British Institute in Paris. He was born in South Shields; he was brought up from a young age at the Royal Mer ...
- Lawrie Scarlett - Bernard Spencer - Stephen Spender - Hal Summers - Julian Symons -
Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Under ...
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R. S. Thomas Ronald Stuart Thomas (29 March 1913 – 25 September 2000), published as R. S. Thomas, was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest ( Church of Wales) noted for nationalism, spirituality and dislike of the anglicisation of Wales. John Betjeman, introduc ...
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Frank Thompson Frank Thompson Jr. (July 26, 1918 – July 22, 1989) was an American politician. He represented in the United States House of Representatives as a Democratic Party (United States), Democrat from 1955 to 1980, and was chairman of the United State ...
- Terence Tiller -
Ruthven Todd Ruthven Campbell Todd (pronounced 'riven') (14 June 1914 – 11 October 1978) was a Scottish poet, artist and novelist, best known as an editor of the works of William Blake, and expert on his printing techniques. During the 1940s he also wrote d ...
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Henry Treece Henry Treece (22 December 1911 – 10 June 1966) was a British poet and writer who also worked as a teacher and editor. He wrote a range of works but is mostly remembered as a writer of children's historical novels. Life and work Treece wa ...
- James Walker -
Vernon Watkins Vernon Phillips Watkins (27 June 1906 – 8 October 1967) was a Welsh poet and translator. His headmaster at Repton was Geoffrey Fisher, who became Archbishop of Canterbury. Despite his parents being Nonconformists, Watkins' school experiences ...
- Paul Widdows *''
The New Poetry ''The New Poetry'' is a poetry anthology edited by Al Alvarez, published in 1962 and in a revised edition in 1966. It was greeted at the time as a significant review of the post-war scene in English poetry. The introduction, written by Alvarez ...
'' (1962, 1966)


''The Mid Century: English Poetry 1940–60'' (1965)

Edited by David Wright. The poets included were: Dannie Abse -
Drummond Allison (John) Drummond Allison (1921 – 2 December 1943) was an English war poet of the Second World War. He was born in Caterham, Surrey, and educated at Bishop's Stortford College and at Queen's College, Oxford. After training at the Royal Militar ...
- J. C. Ashby - W. H. Auden - George Barker - William Bell -
John Betjeman Sir John Betjeman (; 28 August 190619 May 1984) was an English poet, writer, and broadcaster. He was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death. He was a founding member of The Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture, ...
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Thomas Blackburn Thomas, Tom or Tommy Blackburn may refer to: *Anthony Blackburn (born 1945), British vice-admiral and Equerry to the Royal Household, commonly known as Tom Blackburn *Thomas Blackburn (entomologist) (1844–1912), Australian entomologist *Thomas Bl ...
- Norman Cameron - Roy Campbell - Maurice Carpenter - Charles Causley -
Anthony Cronin Anthony Gerard Richard Cronin (28 December 1923 – 27 December 2016) was an Irish poetry, Irish poet, arts activist, biographer, commentator, critic, editor and barrister. Early life and family Cronin was born in Enniscorthy, County Wexford on ...
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Donald Davie Donald Alfred Davie, FBA (17 July 1922 – 18 September 1995) was an English Movement poet, and literary critic. His poems in general are philosophical and abstract, but often evoke various landscapes. Biography Davie was born in Barnsley, ...
- Keith Douglas - Lawrence Durrell - William Empson -
Roy Fuller Roy Broadbent Fuller CBE (11 February 1912 – 27 September 1991) was an English writer, known mostly as a poet. He was born at Failsworth, Lancashire to lower-middle-class parents Leopold Charles Fuller and his wife Nellie (1888–1949; née ...
-
David Gascoyne David Gascoyne (10 October 1916 – 25 November 2001) was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement, in particular the British Surrealist Group. Additionally he translated work by French surrealist poets. Early life and surrealis ...
-
W. S. Graham William Sydney Graham (19 November 1918 – 9 January 1986) was a Scottish poet, who was often associated with Dylan Thomas and the neo-romantic group of poets. Graham's poetry was mostly overlooked in his lifetime; however, partly thanks to th ...
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Robert Graves Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was a British poet, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were both Celtic ...
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Thom Gunn Thomson William "Thom" Gunn (29 August 1929 – 25 April 2004) was an English poet who was praised for his early verses in England, where he was associated with The Movement, and his later poetry in America, even after moving towards a looser, ...
- Michael Hamburger - John Heath-Stubbs -
Brian Higgins Brian Michael Higgins (born October 6, 1959) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for , serving since 2005. The district, numbered as the 27th district from 2005 to 2013 but as the 26th since 2013, includes Buffalo and Ni ...
- Geoffrey Hill -
Ted Hughes Edward James "Ted" Hughes (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest wri ...
- Elizabeth Jennings - Patrick Kavanagh -
Sidney Keyes Sidney Arthur Kilworth Keyes (27 May 1922 – 29 April 1943) was an English poet of World War II. Life Early years and education Keyes was born on 27 May 1922. His mother died shortly afterwards and he was raised by his paternal grandparent ...
- Philip Larkin - Christopher Logue -
Hugh MacDiarmid Christopher Murray Grieve (11 August 1892 – 9 September 1978), best known by his pen name Hugh MacDiarmid (), was a Scottish poet, journalist, essayist and political figure. He is considered one of the principal forces behind the Scottish Rena ...
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Louis MacNeice Frederick Louis MacNeice (12 September 1907 – 3 September 1963) was an Irish poet and playwright, and a member of the Auden Group, which also included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. MacNeice's body of work was widely a ...
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Dom Moraes Dominic Francis Moraes (19 July 1938 – 2 June 2004) was an Indian writer and poet who published nearly 30 books in English. He is widely seen as a foundational figure in Indian English literature. His poems are a meaningful and substantial c ...
- Edwin Muir - William Plomer -
F. T. Prince Frank Templeton Prince (13 September 1912 – 7 August 2003) was a British poet and academic, known generally for his best-known poem ''Soldiers Bathing'', written during the Second World War in 1942, which has been frequently included in antholog ...
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Martin Seymour-Smith Martin Roger Seymour-Smith (24 April 1928 – 1 July 1998) was a British poet, literary critic, and biographer. Biography Seymour-Smith was born in London and educated at Highgate School and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he was editor of ''Isi ...
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C. H. Sisson Charles Hubert Sisson, CH (22 April 1914 – 5 September 2003), usually cited as C. H. Sisson, was a British writer, best known as a poet and translator. Life Born in Bristol in 1914, C. H. Sisson was noted as a poet, novelist, essayist and an ...
- Stevie Smith -
Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Under ...
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Anthony Thwaite Anthony Simon Thwaite (23 June 1930 – 22 April 2021) was an English poet and critic, widely known as the editor of his friend Philip Larkin's collected poems and letters. Early years and education Born in Chester, England, to Yorkshire par ...
- Charles Tomlinson -
Vernon Watkins Vernon Phillips Watkins (27 June 1906 – 8 October 1967) was a Welsh poet and translator. His headmaster at Repton was Geoffrey Fisher, who became Archbishop of Canterbury. Despite his parents being Nonconformists, Watkins' school experiences ...
*''
British Poetry since 1945 ''British Poetry since 1945'' is a poetry anthology edited by Edward Lucie-Smith, first published in 1970 by Penguin Books. The anthology is a careful attempt to take account of the whole span of post-war British poetryMiddleton, Peter (2004"The ...
'' *'' Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain'' *'' Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry''(1982)


''Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse'' (1918–1960)

The ''Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse'' is a
poetry anthology In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors. In genre fiction, the term ''anthology'' typically categ ...
first published in 1950, and edited by
Kenneth Allott Kenneth Cyril Bruce Allott (29 August 1912 – 23 May 1973) was an Anglo-Irish poet and academic, and authority on Matthew Arnold. Life Allott was the elder son of Hubert Cyril Willoughby Allott and his wife Rose (née Finlay).Ian Sansom, ‘All ...
, generally restricted to British poets (
T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biogr ...
, Sylvia Plath and some Irish poets were included). Its significant and expanded second edition of 1962 contains an engaged Introduction by Allott, showing particular concern to reply to
the Movement The Movement may refer to: Politics * The Movement (Iceland), a political party in Iceland * The Movement (Israel), a political party in Israel, led by Tzipi Livni * Civil rights movement, the African-American political movement * The Movemen ...
's argument about the 'Neo-Romantic' style of the 1940s, from the perspective of a dozen more years. Poets in the Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse, Second Edition
Kenneth Allott Kenneth Cyril Bruce Allott (29 August 1912 – 23 May 1973) was an Anglo-Irish poet and academic, and authority on Matthew Arnold. Life Allott was the elder son of Hubert Cyril Willoughby Allott and his wife Rose (née Finlay).Ian Sansom, ‘All ...
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A. Alvarez Alfred Alvarez (5 August 1929 – 23 September 2019) was an English poet, novelist, essayist and critic who published under the name A. Alvarez and Al Alvarez. Background Alfred Alvarez was born in London, to an Ashkenazic Jewish mother and a ...
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Kingsley Amis Sir Kingsley William Amis (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social an ...
- W. H. Auden - George Barker -
Patricia Beer Patricia Beer (4 November 1919 – 15 August 1999) was an English poet and critic. Biography She was born in Exmouth, Devon into a family of Plymouth Brethren. Her mother died when she was fourteen and it affected her entire life and the way ...
- William Bell -
John Betjeman Sir John Betjeman (; 28 August 190619 May 1984) was an English poet, writer, and broadcaster. He was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death. He was a founding member of The Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture, ...
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Laurence Binyon Robert Laurence Binyon, CH (10 August 1869 – 10 March 1943) was an English poet, dramatist and art scholar. Born in Lancaster, England, his parents were Frederick Binyon, a clergyman, and Mary Dockray. He studied at St Paul's School, London ...
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Thomas Blackburn Thomas, Tom or Tommy Blackburn may refer to: *Anthony Blackburn (born 1945), British vice-admiral and Equerry to the Royal Household, commonly known as Tom Blackburn *Thomas Blackburn (entomologist) (1844–1912), Australian entomologist *Thomas Bl ...
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Edmund Blunden Edmund Charles Blunden (1 November 1896 – 20 January 1974) was an English poet, author, and critic. Like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, he wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. For most of his career, Blunden was als ...
- Norman Cameron - Roy Campbell - Robert Conquest -
Hilary Corke Hilary Topham Corke (12 July 1921 – 3 September 2001) was an English writer, composer and mineralogist. Corke was born in Malvern, Worcestershire. He served in the Royal Artillery during World War II. His poems appeared in ''Poetry Now'' (1 ...
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Donald Davie Donald Alfred Davie, FBA (17 July 1922 – 18 September 1995) was an English Movement poet, and literary critic. His poems in general are philosophical and abstract, but often evoke various landscapes. Biography Davie was born in Barnsley, ...
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Cecil Day-Lewis Cecil Day-Lewis (or Day Lewis; 27 April 1904 – 22 May 1972), often written as C. Day-Lewis, was an Irish-born British poet and Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Bla ...
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Walter de la Mare Walter John de la Mare (; 25 April 1873 – 22 June 1956) was an English poet, short story writer, and novelist. He is probably best remembered for his works for children, for his poem "The Listeners", and for a highly acclaimed selection of ...
- Lawrence Durrell -
T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biogr ...
- William Empson -
D. J. Enright Dennis Joseph Enright Order of the British Empire, OBE FRSL (11 March 1920 – 31 December 2002) was a British academic, poet, novelist and critic. He authored ''Academic Year'' (1955), ''Memoirs of a Mendicant Professor'' (1969) and a wide ran ...
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Christopher Fry Christopher Fry (18 December 1907 – 30 June 2005) was an English poet and playwright. He is best known for his verse dramas, especially ''The Lady's Not for Burning'', which made him a major force in theatre in the 1940s and 1950s. Biograph ...
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Roy Fuller Roy Broadbent Fuller CBE (11 February 1912 – 27 September 1991) was an English writer, known mostly as a poet. He was born at Failsworth, Lancashire to lower-middle-class parents Leopold Charles Fuller and his wife Nellie (1888–1949; née ...
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David Gascoyne David Gascoyne (10 October 1916 – 25 November 2001) was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement, in particular the British Surrealist Group. Additionally he translated work by French surrealist poets. Early life and surrealis ...
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W. S. Graham William Sydney Graham (19 November 1918 – 9 January 1986) was a Scottish poet, who was often associated with Dylan Thomas and the neo-romantic group of poets. Graham's poetry was mostly overlooked in his lifetime; however, partly thanks to th ...
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Robert Graves Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was a British poet, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were both Celtic ...
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Thom Gunn Thomson William "Thom" Gunn (29 August 1929 – 25 April 2004) was an English poet who was praised for his early verses in England, where he was associated with The Movement, and his later poetry in America, even after moving towards a looser, ...
- John Heath-Stubbs - Geoffrey Hill - John Holloway -
Ted Hughes Edward James "Ted" Hughes (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest wri ...
- Aldous Huxley - Elizabeth Jennings -
James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...
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Sidney Keyes Sidney Arthur Kilworth Keyes (27 May 1922 – 29 April 1943) was an English poet of World War II. Life Early years and education Keyes was born on 27 May 1922. His mother died shortly afterwards and he was raised by his paternal grandparent ...
- Thomas Kinsella - James Kirkup - Philip Larkin -
D. H. Lawrence David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English writer, novelist, poet and essayist. His works reflect on modernity, industrialization, sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity and instinct. His best-k ...
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Laurie Lee Laurence Edward Alan "Laurie" Lee, MBE (26 June 1914 – 13 May 1997) was an English poet, novelist and screenwriter, who was brought up in the small village of Slad in Gloucestershire. His most notable work is the autobiographical trilogy ...
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John Lehmann Rudolf John Frederick Lehmann (2 June 1907 – 7 April 1987) was an English poet and man of letters. He founded the periodicals ''New Writing'' and ''The London Magazine'', and the publishing house of John Lehmann Limited. Biography Born in ...
- Peter Levi - Alun Lewis - Wyndham Lewis -
Norman MacCaig Norman Alexander MacCaig DLitt (14 November 1910 – 23 January 1996) was a Scottish poet and teacher. His poetry, in modern English, is known for its humour, simplicity of language and great popularity. Life Norman Alexander MacCaig was born ...
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Louis MacNeice Frederick Louis MacNeice (12 September 1907 – 3 September 1963) was an Irish poet and playwright, and a member of the Auden Group, which also included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. MacNeice's body of work was widely a ...
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Charles Madge Charles Henry Madge (10 October 1912 – 17 January 1996) was an English poet, journalist and sociologist, now most remembered as a founder of Mass-Observation.Philip Bounds, ''Orwell and Marxism: the political and cultural thinking of George Orw ...
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Jon Manchip White Jon Ewbank Manchip White (22 June 1924''The Independent'' obituary -, 17 September 2013]. Accessed 20 October 2013 – July 31, 2013) was the Welsh American author of more than thirty books of non-fiction and fiction, including ''The Last Ra ...
- Harold Monro - Edwin Muir -
Norman Nicholson Norman Cornthwaite Nicholson (8 January 1914 – 30 May 1987) was an English poet associated with the Cumbrian town of Millom. His poetry is noted for local concerns, straightforward language, and elements of common speech. Although known chief ...
- Wilfred Owen - Sylvia Plath - William Plomer -
F. T. Prince Frank Templeton Prince (13 September 1912 – 7 August 2003) was a British poet and academic, known generally for his best-known poem ''Soldiers Bathing'', written during the Second World War in 1942, which has been frequently included in antholog ...
- Peter Quennell - Kathleen Raine -
Herbert Read Sir Herbert Edward Read, (; 4 December 1893 – 12 June 1968) was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read ...
- Henry Reed - James Reeves - Anne Ridler - Michael Roberts -
W. R. Rodgers William Robert Rodgers (1909 – 1969), known as Bertie, and born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, was probably best known as a poet, but was also a prose essayist, a book reviewer, a radio broadcaster and script writer, a lecturer and, latterly, ...
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Isaac Rosenberg Isaac Rosenberg (25 November 1890 – 1 April 1918) was an English poet and artist. His ''Poems from the Trenches'' are recognized as some of the most outstanding poetry written during the First World War. Early life Isaac Rosenberg was born ...
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Siegfried Sassoon Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967) was an English war poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both describ ...
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Francis Scarfe Francis Harold Scarfe (1911–1986) was an English poet, critic and novelist, who became an academic, translator and Director of the British Institute in Paris. He was born in South Shields; he was brought up from a young age at the Royal Mer ...
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E. J. Scovell Edith Joy Scovell (9 April 1907 – 19 October 1999) was an English poet and translator. Among those who admired her work were the fellow-writers Vita Sackville-West and Philip Larkin. Life Edith Joy Scovell was born in Eccleshall Bierlow, near ...
- Jon Silkin - Sacheverell Sitwell - Bernard Spencer - Stephen Spender -
Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Under ...
- Edward Thomas -
R. S. Thomas Ronald Stuart Thomas (29 March 1913 – 25 September 2000), published as R. S. Thomas, was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest ( Church of Wales) noted for nationalism, spirituality and dislike of the anglicisation of Wales. John Betjeman, introduc ...
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Anthony Thwaite Anthony Simon Thwaite (23 June 1930 – 22 April 2021) was an English poet and critic, widely known as the editor of his friend Philip Larkin's collected poems and letters. Early years and education Born in Chester, England, to Yorkshire par ...
- Terence Tiller - Charles Tomlinson -
Henry Treece Henry Treece (22 December 1911 – 10 June 1966) was a British poet and writer who also worked as a teacher and editor. He wrote a range of works but is mostly remembered as a writer of children's historical novels. Life and work Treece wa ...
- John Wain -
Arthur Waley Arthur David Waley (born Arthur David Schloss, 19 August 188927 June 1966) was an English orientalist and sinologist who achieved both popular and scholarly acclaim for his translations of Chinese and Japanese poetry. Among his honours were th ...
- Rex Warner -
Vernon Watkins Vernon Phillips Watkins (27 June 1906 – 8 October 1967) was a Welsh poet and translator. His headmaster at Repton was Geoffrey Fisher, who became Archbishop of Canterbury. Despite his parents being Nonconformists, Watkins' school experiences ...
- Charles Williams -
W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...
- Andrew Young


''The Penguin Book of the Sonnet'' (2001)

Edited by Phillis Levin. The poets included were: Francesco Petrarca -
Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He wa ...
- Thomas Wyatt - Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey -
Anne Locke Anne Locke (Lock, Lok) (c.1533 – after 1590) was an English poet, translator and Calvinist religious figure. She has been called the first English author to publish a sonnet sequence, ''A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner'' (1560), although auth ...
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George Gascoigne George Gascoigne (c. 15357 October 1577) was an English poet, soldier and unsuccessful courtier. He is considered the most important poet of the early Elizabethan era, following Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and leading to t ...
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Edmund Spenser Edmund Spenser (; 1552/1553 – 13 January 1599) was an English poet best known for ''The Faerie Queene'', an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of ...
- Fulke Greville -
Philip Sidney Philip, also Phillip, is a male given name, derived from the Greek language, Greek (''Philippos'', lit. "horse-loving" or "fond of horses"), from a compound of (''philos'', "dear", "loved", "loving") and (''hippos'', "horse"). Prominent Philip ...
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Walter Ralegh Sir Walter Raleigh (; – 29 October 1618) was an English statesman, soldier, writer and explorer. One of the most notable figures of the Elizabethan era, he played a leading part in English colonisation of North America, suppressed rebellion ...
- George Chapman - Henry Constable -
Mark Alexander Boyd Mark Alexander Boyd (13 January 1562 – 10 April 1601) was a Scottish poet and soldier of fortune. He was born in Ayrshire, Scotland. His father was from Penkill, Carrick, in Ayrshire. He was educated under the care of his uncle, the ...
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Samuel Daniel Samuel Daniel (1562–1619) was an English poet, playwright and historian in the late- Elizabethan and early- Jacobean eras. He was an innovator in a wide range of literary genres. His best-known works are the sonnet cycle ''Delia'', the epi ...
- Michael Drayton -
John Davies of Hereford John Davies of Hereford (c. 1565 – July 1618) was a writing-master and an Anglo-Welsh poet. He referred to himself as ''John Davies of Hereford'' (after the city where he was born) in order to distinguish himself from others of the same name ...
- Charles Best -
William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
- John Davies -
John Donne John Donne ( ; 22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a clergy, cleric in the Church of England. Under royal patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's ...
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Ben Jonson Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for t ...
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Lord Herbert of Cherbury Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury (or Chirbury) KB (3 March 1583 – 5 August 1648) was an English soldier, diplomat, historian, poet and religious philosopher of the Kingdom of England. Life Early life Edward Herbert was the ...
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William Drummond of Hawthornden William Drummond (13 December 15854 December 1649), called "of Hawthornden", was a Scottish poet. Life Drummond was born at Hawthornden Castle, Midlothian, to John Drummond, the first laird of Hawthornden, and Susannah Fowler, sister of the ...
- Mary Wroth - Robert Herrick - George Herbert -
John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem '' Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political ...
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Charles Cotton Charles Cotton (28 April 1630 – 16 February 1687) was an English poet and writer, best known for translating the work of Michel de Montaigne from the French, for his contributions to ''The Compleat Angler'', and for the influential ''The Comp ...
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Thomas Gray Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, letter-writer, classics, classical scholar, and professor at Pembroke College, Cambridge, Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is widely known for his ''Elegy Written in a Country ...
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Charlotte Turner Smith Charlotte Smith (née Turner; – ) was an English novelist and poet of the School of Sensibility whose ''Elegiac Sonnets'' (1784) contributed to the revival of the form in England. She also helped to set conventions for Gothic fiction and wro ...
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William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. ...
- Robert Burns -
William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Ballads'' (1798). Wordsworth's ' ...
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poe ...
- Robert Southey - Mary F. Johnson - Leigh Hunt - George Gordon, Lord Byron -
Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ; 4 August 17928 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achie ...
- John Clare -
John Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculo ...
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Hartley Coleridge Hartley Coleridge, possibly David Hartley Coleridge (19 September 1796 – 6 January 1849), was an English poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher. He was the eldest son of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His sister Sara Coleridge was a poet an ...
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Thomas Lovell Beddoes Thomas Lovell Beddoes (30 June 1803 – 26 January 1849) was an English poet, dramatist and physician. Biography Born in Clifton, Bristol, England, he was the son of Dr. Thomas Beddoes, a friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Anna, sister o ...
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning Elizabeth Barrett Browning (née Moulton-Barrett; 6 March 1806 – 29 June 1861) was an English poet of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime. Born in County Durham, the eldest of 12 children, Elizabet ...
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include "Paul Revere's Ride", ''The Song of Hiawatha'', and ''Evangeline''. He was the first American to completely transl ...
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Charles Tennyson Turner Charles Tennyson Turner (4 July 1808 – 25 April 1879) was an English poet. Born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, he was an elder brother of Alfred Tennyson; his friendship and the "heart union" with his brother is revealed in ''Poems by Two Brothe ...
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Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is wide ...
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...
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Robert Browning Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings ...
- Aubrey Thomas de Vere - George Eliot -
Frederick Goddard Tuckerman Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (February 4, 1821 – May 9, 1873) was an American poet, remembered mostly for his sonnet series. Apart from the 1860 publication of his book ''Poems'', which included approximately two-fifths of his lifetime sonnet o ...
- Matthew Arnold - George Meredith - Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Christina Rossetti -
Algernon Charles Swinburne Algernon Charles Swinburne (5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909) was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He wrote several novels and collections of poetry such as ''Poems and Ballads'', and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition ...
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Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Word ...
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Robert Bridges Robert Seymour Bridges (23 October 1844 – 21 April 1930) was an English poet who was Poet Laureate from 1913 to 1930. A doctor by training, he achieved literary fame only late in life. His poems reflect a deep Christian faith, and he is ...
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Gerard Manley Hopkins Gerard Manley Hopkins (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame placed him among leading Victorian poets. His prosody – notably his concept of sprung rhythm – established him as an innovato ...
- Emma Lazarus -
Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
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W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...
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Ernest Dowson Ernest Christopher Dowson (2 August 186723 February 1900) was an English poet, novelist, and short-story writer who is often associated with the Decadent movement. Biography Ernest Dowson was born in Lee, then in Kent, in 1867. His great-uncle ...
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Edwin Arlington Robinson Edwin Arlington Robinson (December 22, 1869 – April 6, 1935) was an American poet and playwright. Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on three occasions and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. Early life Robins ...
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Trumbull Stickney Joseph Trumbull Stickney (June 20, 1874 – October 11, 1904) was an American classical scholar and poet. Biography He was born in Geneva and spent much of his early life in Europe. He attended Harvard University from 1891, when he became editor ...
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Rupert Brooke Rupert Chawner Brooke (3 August 1887 – 23 April 1915)The date of Brooke's death and burial under the Julian calendar that applied in Greece at the time was 10 April. The Julian calendar was 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar. was an En ...
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Alice Dunbar-Nelson Alice Dunbar Nelson (July 19, 1875 – September 18, 1935) was an American poet, journalist, and political activist. Among the first generation born free in the South after the Civil War, she was one of the prominent African Americans involved i ...
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Robert Frost Robert Lee Frost (March26, 1874January29, 1963) was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloq ...
- Edward Thomas -
Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
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Elinor Wylie Elinor Morton Wylie (September 7, 1885 – December 16, 1928) was an American poet and novelist popular in the 1920s and 1930s. "She was famous during her life almost as much for her ethereal beauty and personality as for her melodious, sensu ...
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Siegfried Sassoon Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967) was an English war poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both describ ...
- Robinson Jeffers - Marianne Moore - Edwin Muir -
T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biogr ...
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John Crowe Ransom John Crowe Ransom (April 30, 1888 – July 3, 1974) was an American educator, scholar, literary critic, poet, essayist and editor. He is considered to be a founder of the New Criticism school of literary criticism. As a faculty member at Kenyon ...
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Claude McKay Festus Claudius "Claude" McKay OJ (September 15, 1890See Wayne F. Cooper, ''Claude McKay, Rebel Sojourner In The Harlem Renaissance (New York, Schocken, 1987) p. 377 n. 19. As Cooper's authoritative biography explains, McKay's family predated ...
- Archibald MacLeish -
Edna St. Vincent Millay Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright. Millay was a renowned social figure and noted feminist in New York City during the Roaring Twenties and beyond. She wrote much of he ...
- Wilfred Owen -
Dorothy Parker Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild; August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet, writer, critic, and satirist based in New York; she was known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles. From a conflicted and unhap ...
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E. E. Cummings Edward Estlin Cummings, who was also known as E. E. Cummings, e. e. cummings and e e cummings (October 14, 1894 - September 3, 1962), was an American poet, painter, essayist, author and playwright. He wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two autobi ...
- Jean Toomer -
Robert Graves Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was a British poet, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were both Celtic ...
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Edmund Blunden Edmund Charles Blunden (1 November 1896 – 20 January 1974) was an English poet, author, and critic. Like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, he wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. For most of his career, Blunden was als ...
- Louise Bogan -
Hart Crane Harold Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932) was an American poet. Provoked and inspired by T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote modernist poetry that was difficult, highly stylized, and ambitious in its scope. In his most ambitious work, '' The Brid ...
- Roy Campbell -
Countee Cullen Countee Cullen (born Countee LeRoy Porter; May 30, 1903 – January 9, 1946) was an American poet, novelist, children's writer, and playwright, particularly well known during the Harlem Renaissance. Early life Childhood Countee LeRoy Porter ...
- Patrick Kavanagh - W. H. Auden -
Louis MacNeice Frederick Louis MacNeice (12 September 1907 – 3 September 1963) was an Irish poet and playwright, and a member of the Auden Group, which also included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. MacNeice's body of work was widely a ...
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Malcolm Lowry Clarence Malcolm Lowry (; 28 July 1909 – 26 June 1957) was an English poet and novelist who is best known for his 1947 novel ''Under the Volcano'', which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.
- Stephen Spender -
Elizabeth Bishop Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) was an American people, American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the N ...
- George Barker - Robert Hayden -
John Berryman John Allyn McAlpin Berryman (born John Allyn Smith, Jr.; October 25, 1914 – January 7, 1972) was an American poet and scholar. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and is considered a key figure in th ...
- Weldon Kees -
Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Under ...
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Margaret Walker Margaret Walker (Margaret Abigail Walker Alexander by marriage; July 7, 1915 – November 30, 1998) was an American poet and writer. She was part of the African-American literary movement in Chicago, known as the Chicago Black Renaissance. H ...
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Gwendolyn Brooks Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an American poet, author, and teacher. Her work often dealt with the personal celebrations and struggles of ordinary people in her community. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetr ...
- Charles Causley -
Robert Lowell Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the ''Mayflower''. His family, past and present, were important subjects i ...
- William Meredith -
Amy Clampitt Amy Clampitt (June 15, 1920 – September 10, 1994) was an American poet and author. Life Clampitt was born on June 15, 1920, of Quaker parents, and brought up in New Providence, Iowa. In the American Academy of Arts and Letters and at nearby Gr ...
- Howard Nemerov - Hayden Carruth -
Marie Ponsot Marie Ponsot (née Birmingham; April 6, 1921 – July 5, 2019) was an American poet, literary critic, essayist, teacher, and translator. Her awards and honors included the National Book Critics Circle Award, Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize, the ...
- Richard Wilbur - Philip Larkin -
Anthony Hecht Anthony Evan Hecht (January 16, 1923 – October 20, 2004) was an American poet. His work combined a deep interest in form with a passionate desire to confront the horrors of 20th century history, with the Second World War, in which he fought, an ...
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Jane Cooper Jane Cooper (October 9, 1924 – October 26, 2007) was an American poet. Awards * Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters * Maurice English Poetry Award (1985) * Shelley Memorial Award (1977) * Bunting Institute of Radc ...
- Donald Justice -
James K. Baxter James Keir Baxter (29 June 1926 – 22 October 1972) was a New Zealand poet and playwright. He was also known as an activist for the preservation of Māori culture. He is one of New Zealand's most well-known and controversial literary figures. H ...
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James Merrill James Ingram Merrill (March 3, 1926 – February 6, 1995) was an American poet. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1977 for ''Divine Comedies.'' His poetry falls into two distinct bodies of work: the polished and formalist lyri ...
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John Ashbery John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) was an American poet and art critic. Ashbery is considered the most influential American poet of his time. Oxford University literary critic John Bayley wrote that Ashbery "sounded, in ...
- W. S. Merwin - James Wright - Donald Hall -
Thom Gunn Thomson William "Thom" Gunn (29 August 1929 – 25 April 2004) was an English poet who was praised for his early verses in England, where he was associated with The Movement, and his later poetry in America, even after moving towards a looser, ...
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John Hollander John Hollander (October 28, 1929 – August 17, 2013) was an American poet and literary critic. At the time of his death, he was Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University, having previously taught at Connecticut College, Hunter C ...
- Adrienne Rich -
Derek Walcott Sir Derek Alton Walcott (23 January 1930 – 17 March 2017) was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include the Homeric epic poem ''Omeros'' (1990), which many critics view "as Walcot ...
- Geoffrey Hill - Sylvia Plath -
John Updike John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth ...
- Jean Valentine -
Robert Mezey Robert Mezey (February 28, 1935 – April 25, 2020) was an American poet, critic and academic. He was also a noted translator, in particular from Spanish, having translated with Richard Barnes the collected poems of Borges. He was born in Philadel ...
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Grace Schulman Grace Schulman (born Grace Jan Waldman, 1935, New York City) is an American poet. She received the 2016 Frost Medal for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in American Poetry, awarded by the Poetry Society of America. In 2019, she was inducted as me ...
- Charles Wright -
June Jordan June Millicent Jordan (July 9, 1936 – June 14, 2002) was an American poet, essayist, teacher, and activist. In her writing she explored issues of gender, race, immigration, and representation. Jordan was passionate about using Black English i ...
- Judith Rodriguez -
Frederick Seidel Frederick Seidel (born February 19, 1936) is an American poet. Biography Seidel was born to a family of Russian Jewish descent in St. Louis, Missouri in 1936. His family owned Seidel Coal and Coke, which supplied coal to the brewing industry in St ...
- John Fuller -
Tony Harrison Tony Harrison (born 30 April 1937) is an English poet, translator and playwright. He was born in Beeston, Leeds and he received his education in Classics from Leeds Grammar School and Leeds University. He is one of Britain's foremost verse w ...
- Les Murray - Charles Simic - Frank Bidart -
Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (; 13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Stanley Plumly Stanley Plumly (May 23, 1939 – April 11, 2019) was an American poet and the director of University of Maryland, College Park's creative writing program. Plumly grew up in Ohio and Virginia and was educated at Wilmington College in Ohio and at ...
- Billy Collins - Douglas Dunn - Marilyn Hacker -
David Huddle David Ross Huddle (born July 11, 1942) is an American writer and professor. His poems, essays, and short stories have appeared in ''The New Yorker'', '' Esquire'', '' Harper's Magazine'', ''The New York Times Magazine'', ''Story'', ''The Autumn H ...
- Charles Martin - William Matthews -
Louise Glück Louise Elisabeth Glück ( ; born April 22, 1943) is an American poet and essayist. She won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, whose judges praised "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal". He ...
- Ellen Bryant Voigt - Eavan Boland -
J. D. McClatchy J. D. "Sandy" McClatchy (August 12, 1945 – April 10, 2018) was an American poet, opera librettist and literary critic. He was editor of the ''Yale Review'' and president of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Life McClatchy was born ...
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Leon Stokesbury Leon Stokesbury (1945 Oklahoma City- November 13, 2018) was an American poet. Life He graduated from the University of Arkansas with an MFA, and earned his Ph.D. at Florida State University. He taught creative writing at Georgia State University ...
- Star Black - Marilyn Nelson - Bruce Smith -
Molly Peacock Molly Peacock (born Buffalo, New York 1947) is an American-Canadian poet, essayist, biographer and speaker, whose multi-genre literary life also includes memoir, short fiction, and a one-woman show. Career Peacock's latest book is Flower Diary ...
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Hugh Seidman Hugh Seidman (1940 – November 9, 2023) was an American poet. Life Seidman was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1940. He was a graduate of Polytechnic Institute of New York University, where he studied under Louis Zukofsky. His first book of poetry was pu ...
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Rachel Hadas Rachel Hadas (born November 8, 1948) is an American poet, teacher, essayist, and translator. Her most recent essay collection is ''Piece by Piece: Selected Prose'' (Paul Dry Books, 2021), and her most recent poetry collection is ''Love and Dread'' ...
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Denis Johnson Denis Hale Johnson (July 1, 1949 – May 24, 2017) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet. He is perhaps best known for his debut short story collection, '' Jesus' Son'' (1992). His most successful novel, ''Tree of Smoke'' (2007) ...
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Sherod Santos Sherod Santos (born September 9, 1948 in Greenville, South Carolina) is an American poet, essayist, translator and playwright. His newest poetry collection, ''Square Inch Hours'' (W.W. Norton) was published in 2017. His work has appeared in ''The ...
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Julia Alvarez Julia Alvarez (born March 27, 1950) is an American New Formalist poet, novelist, and essayist. She rose to prominence with the novels ''How the García Girls Lost Their Accents'' (1991), '' In the Time of the Butterflies'' (1994), and ''Yo!'' ...
- Dana Gioia - Medbh McGuckian - Paul Muldoon - Rita Dove -
Mark Jarman Mark F. Jarman (born in Mount Sterling, Kentucky) is an American poet and critic often identified with the New Narrative branch of the New Formalism; he was co-editor with Robert McDowell of '' The Reaper'' throughout the 1980s. Centennial Pro ...
- Elizabeth Macklin - Tom Sleigh -
Rosanna Warren Rosanna Phelps Warren (born July 27, 1953) is an American poet and scholar. Biography Warren is the daughter of novelist, literary critic and Poet Laureate Robert Penn Warren and writer Eleanor Clark. She graduated from Yale University, where ...
- David Baker -
Phillis Levin Phillis Levin (born 1954 Paterson, New Jersey) is an American poet. Life Levin is the daughter of Charlotte E. Levin and Herbert L. Levin of Yardley, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1976, and Johns Hopkins University ...
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John Burnside John Burnside FRSL FRSE (born 19 March 1955) is a Scottish writer. He is one of only three poets (the others being Ted Hughes and Sean O'Brien) to have won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for the same book (''Black Cat ...
- Carol Ann Duffy -
Robin Robertson Robin Robertson (born in 1955) is a Scottish poet. Biography Robertson was brought up on the north-east coast of Scotland, but has spent most of his professional life in London. After working as an editor at Penguin Books and Secker and Warb ...
- Karl Kirchwey - Deborah Laser -
Jacqueline Osherow Jacqueline Osherow (born 1956) is an American poet, and Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah. Biography Raised in Philadelphia, Jacqueline Osherow graduated from Radcliffe College with a BA ''magna cum laude'', and from Princeton Un ...
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James Lasdun James Lasdun (born 1958) is an English novelist and poet. Life and career Lasdun was born in London, the son of Susan (Bendit) and British architect Sir Denys Lasdun. Lasdun has written four novels, including , a New York Times Notable Book, and ...
- Kate Light - Joe Bolton - Rafael Campo - Mike Nelson - Daniel Gutstein -
Beth Ann Fennelly Beth Ann Fennelly (born May 22, 1971) is an American poet and prose writer and was the Poet Laureate of Mississippi. __TOC__ Biography She was born in New Jersey and raised in Lake Forest, Illinois. She attended Woodlands Academy of the Sacred ...
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Jason Schneiderman Jason Schneiderman (born 1976) is an American poet. Life Jason Schneiderman has BA degrees in English and Russian from the University of Maryland, an MFA in poetry from NYU, and a Ph.D. in English Literature with a focus on Queer Theory from the ...


''The Penguin Book of Irish Verse'' (1970, 2nd Edition 1981)

Edited by
Brendan Kennelly Timothy Brendan Kennelly (17 April 1936 – 17 October 2021), usually known as Brendan Kennelly, was an Irish poet and novelist. He was Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College Dublin until 2005. Following his retirement he was a Pr ...
. The poets included were:
Frank O'Connor Frank O'Connor (born Michael Francis O'Donovan; 17 September 1903 – 10 March 1966) was an Irish author and translator. He wrote poetry (original and translations from Irish), dramatic works, memoirs, journalistic columns and features on a ...
- Charles Wolfe - Jeremiah Joseph Callanan -
George Darley George Darley (1795–1846) was an Irish poet, novelist, literary critic, and author of mathematical texts. Friends with such literary luminaries as Charles Lamb, Thomas Carlyle, and John Clare, he was considered by some to be on a level with Te ...
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Eugene O'Curry Eugene O'Curry ( ga, Eoghan Ó Comhraí or Eoghan Ó Comhraidhe, 20 November 179430 July 1862) was an Irish philologist and antiquary. Life He was born at Doonaha, near Carrigaholt, County Clare, the son of Eoghan Ó Comhraí, a farmer, and hi ...
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James Clarence Mangan James Clarence Mangan, born James Mangan ( ga, Séamus Ó Mangáin; 1 May 1803, Dublin – 20 June 1849), was an Irish poet. He freely translated works from German, Turkish, Persian, Arabic, and Irish, with his translations of Goethe gaining sp ...
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Gerald Griffin Gerald Griffin ( ga, Gearóid Ó Gríofa; 12 December 1803 – 12 June 1840) was an Irish novelist, poet and playwright. His novel ''The Collegians'' was the basis of Dion Boucicault's play The Colleen Bawn. Feeling he was "wasting his time" wr ...
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Francis Sylvester Mahony Francis Sylvester Mahony (31 December 1804 – 18 May 1866), also known by the pen name Father Prout, was an Irish humorist and journalist. Life He was born in Cork, Ireland, to Martin Mahony and Mary Reynolds. He was educated at the Jesuit ...
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Edward Walsh Edward Walsh may refer to: Sports * Ed Walsh (1881–1959), Major League pitcher * Ed Walsh Jr. (1905–1937), Major League pitcher, son of Ed Walsh * Ed Walsh (ice hockey) (born 1951), retired goaltender * Eddie Walsh (footballer) (1914–2006), ...
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George Fox George Fox (July 1624 – 13 January 1691) was an English Dissenter, who was a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers or Friends. The son of a Leicestershire weaver, he lived in times of social upheaval and ...
- Samuel Ferguson - Aubrey de Vere - Thomas Davis - William McBurney - Arthur G. Geoghegan -
Lady Wilde Jane Francesca Agnes, Lady Wilde (née Elgee; 27 December 1821 – 3 February 1896) was an Irish poet under the pen name Speranza and supporter of the nationalist movement. Lady Wilde had a special interest in Irish folktales, which she help ...
- John Kells Ingram - Michael Joseph McCann -
Thomas Caulfield Irwin Thomas Caulfield Irwin (4 May 1823 – 20 February 1892) was an Irish poet, writer, and classical scholar. He was born in Warrenpoint, County Down, to a prosperous family. He was educated privately. He travelled to Europe and Africa but later bec ...
- William Allingham -
Thomas D'Arcy McGee Thomas D'Arcy McGee (13 April 18257 April 1868) was an Irish-Canadian politician, Catholic spokesman, journalist, poet, and a Father of Canadian Confederation. The young McGee was an Irish Catholic who opposed British rule in Ireland, and w ...
- John Todhunter -
Edward Dowden Edward Dowden (3 May 18434 April 1913) was an Irish critic, professor, and poet. Biography He was the son of John Wheeler Dowden, a merchant and landowner, and was born at Cork, three years after his brother John, who became Bishop of Edinburgh ...
- John Boyle O'Reilly - Arthur O'Shaughnessy -
Emily Lawless The Hon. Emily Lawless (17 June 184519 October 1913) was an Irish novelist, historian, entomologist, gardener, and poet from County Kildare. Her innovative approach to narrative and the psychological richness of her fiction have been identifi ...
- Alfred Perceval Graves -
William Larminie William Larminie (1 August 1849 – 19 January 1900) was an Irish poet and folklorist. He was born in Castlebar, County Mayo, of Huguenot descent and was educated at Kingstown School and Trinity College Dublin, from which he graduated in 1871 ...
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John Keegan Casey John Keegan "Leo" Casey (1846 – 17 March 1870), known as ''the Poet of the Fenians'', was an Irish poet, orator and republican who was famous as the writer of the song " The Rising of the Moon" and as one of the central figures in the Fenian Ris ...
- Fanny Parnell -
Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
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T. W. Rolleston Thomas William Hazen Rolleston (1 May 1857 – 5 December 1920) was an Irish writer, literary figure and translator, known as a poet but publishing over a wide range of literary and political topics. He lived at various times in Killiney in Cou ...
- John Synge -
Thomas MacDonagh Thomas Stanislaus MacDonagh ( ga, Tomás Anéislis Mac Donnchadha; 1 February 1878 – 3 May 1916) was an Irish political activist, poet, playwright, educationalist and revolutionary leader. He was one of the seven leaders of the Easter Rising o ...
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Patrick Pearse Patrick Henry Pearse (also known as Pádraig or Pádraic Pearse; ga, Pádraig Anraí Mac Piarais; 10 November 1879 – 3 May 1916) was an Irish teacher, barrister, poet, writer, nationalist, republican political activist and revolutionary who ...
- Joseph Plunkett -
Francis Ledwidge Francis Edward Ledwidge (19 August 188731 July 1917) was a 20th-century Irish poet. From Slane, County Meath, and sometimes known as the "poet of the blackbirds", he was later also known as a First World War war poet. He befriended the establish ...
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W.B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...
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George William Russell George William Russell (10 April 1867 – 17 July 1935), who wrote with the pseudonym Æ (often written AE or A.E.), was an Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, painter and Irish nationalist. He was also a writer on mysticism, and a centra ...
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Oliver St. John Gogarty Oliver Joseph St. John Gogarty (17 August 1878 – 22 September 1957) was an Irish poet, author, otolaryngologist, athlete, politician, and well-known conversationalist. He served as the inspiration for Buck Mulligan in James Joyce's novel ...
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Joseph Campbell Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the ...
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Seamus O'Sullivan Seumas or Seamus O'Sullivan (born James Sullivan Starkey; 17 July 1879 – 24 March 1958) was an Irish poetry, Irish poet and editor of ''The Dublin Magazine''. His father, William Starkey (1836-1918), a physician, was also a poet and a friend of S ...
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Padraic Colum Padraic Colum (8 December 1881 – 11 January 1972) was an Irish poet, novelist, dramatist, biographer, playwright, children's author and collector of folklore. He was one of the leading figures of the Irish Literary Revival. Early life Col ...
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James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...
- James Stephens - Austin Clarke -
Monk Gibbon William Monk Gibbon (1896 – 29 November 1987) was an Irish poet and prolific writer, known as "The Grand Old Man of Irish Letters". His collection of over twenty volumes of poetry, autobiography, travel and criticism are kept at Queen's Univ ...
- F.R. Higgins -
R. N. D. Wilson Robert (or Robin) Noble Denison Wilson, known as R. N. D. Wilson (1899 – January 1953) was an Irish poet. From 1934 to 1944 he was a teacher at Rendcomb College. His published work includes the collection ''The Holy Wells of Orris and other ...
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Patrick MacDonogh Patrick MacDonogh (1902–1961) was an Irish poetry, Irish poet who published five books of poetry in his lifetime. His work is included in the Faber Book of Irish Verse. Biography Patrick MacDonogh was born in Dublin, one of five children. His ...
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Ewart Milne Ewart Milne (25 May 1903 – 14 January 1987) was an Irish poet who described himself on various book jackets as "a sailor before the mast, ambulance driver and courier during the Spanish Civil War, a land worker and estate manager in England du ...
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C. Day-Lewis Cecil Day-Lewis (or Day Lewis; 27 April 1904 – 22 May 1972), often written as C. Day-Lewis, was an Irish-born British poet and Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Bla ...
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Padraic Fallon Padraic Fallon (3 January 1905 – 9 October 1974) was an Irish poet and playwright. Personal life Fallon was born and raised in Athenry, County Galway; his upbringing and his early impressions of the town and the surrounding landscape are in ...
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Bryan Guinness Bryan Walter Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne, (27 October 1905 – 6 July 1992) was an heir to part of the Guinness family brewing fortune, and a lawyer, poet and novelist. He was briefly married to Diana Mitford. Early life He was born to W ...
- Patrick Kavanagh -
Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...
- John Hewitt -
Louis MacNeice Frederick Louis MacNeice (12 September 1907 – 3 September 1963) was an Irish poet and playwright, and a member of the Auden Group, which also included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. MacNeice's body of work was widely a ...
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Denis Devlin Denis Devlin (15 April 1908 – 21 August 1959) was, along with Samuel Beckett, Thomas MacGreevy and Brian Coffey, one of the generation of Irish modernist poets to emerge at the end of the 1920s. He was also a career diplomat. Early life and ...
- Robert Farren -
W. R. Rodgers William Robert Rodgers (1909 – 1969), known as Bertie, and born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, was probably best known as a poet, but was also a prose essayist, a book reviewer, a radio broadcaster and script writer, a lecturer and, latterly, ...
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W. B. Stanford William Bedell Stanford (16 January 1910 – 30 December 1984) was an Irish classical scholar and senator. He was Regius Professor of Greek at Trinity College Dublin between 1940 and 1980 and served as the 22nd chancellor of the university betwe ...
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Donagh MacDonagh Donagh MacDonagh (22 November 1912 – 1 January 1968) was an Irish writer, judge, presenter, broadcaster, and playwright. Personal life MacDonagh was born in Dublin on St Cecilia's Day in 1912. He was still a young child when his father Th ...
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Sigerson Clifford Sigerson Clifford (1913 – 1 January 1985) was an Irish poet, playwright and civil servant. Clifford was born at 11 Dean St, Cork City, and was christened Edward Bernard Clifford. His parents, Michael Clifford and Mary Anne Sigerson, were f ...
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Valentin Iremonger Valentin Iremonger (14 February 1918 – 22 May 1991) was an Irish diplomat and poet. He was born on Valentine's Day in Sandymount, Dublin and joined the diplomatic service. He served as Irish Ambassador to Sweden, Norway, Finland, India, Luxem ...
- Kevin Faller -
Roy McFadden Roy McFadden (14 November 1921 – 15 September 1999) was a Northern Irish poet, editor, and lawyer. McFadden's first poem was published before he was thirteen. His earliest influences were from magazines and journals that his Father brought home, ...
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Padraic Fiacc Padraic Fiacc (born Patrick Joseph O'Connor; 15 April 1924 – 21 January 2019) was an Irish poet, and member of Aosdána, the exclusive Irish Arts Academy. Biographical information Born Patrick Joseph O'Connor in Belfast to Bernard and Annie ( ...
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Anthony Cronin Anthony Gerard Richard Cronin (28 December 1923 – 27 December 2016) was an Irish poetry, Irish poet, arts activist, biographer, commentator, critic, editor and barrister. Early life and family Cronin was born in Enniscorthy, County Wexford on ...
- Jerome Kiely - Eugene R. Watters -
Pearse Hutchinson Pearse Hutchinson (16 February 1927 – 14 January 2012) was an Irish poet, broadcaster and translator. Childhood and education Hutchinson was born in Glasgow. His father, Harry Hutchinson, a Scottish printer whose own father had left Dublin to ...
- Richard Kell - Richard Murphy -
John B. Keane John Brendan Keane (21 July 1928 – 30 May 2002) was an Irish playwright, novelist and essayist from Listowel, County Kerry. Biography A son of a national school teacher, William B. Keane, and his wife Hannah (née Purtill), Keane was ...
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Ulick O'Connor Ulick O'Connor (; ; 12 October 1928 – 7 October 2019) was an Irish literature, Irish writer, historian and critic. Early life Born in Rathgar, County Dublin, in 1928 to Matthew O'Connor, the Dean of the Royal College of Surgeons, O'Connor a ...
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Basil Payne Basil Payne (23 June 1923 — 6 January 2012) was an Irish poet and lecturer. Life Payne was educated at Synge Street CBS and University College Dublin. In the 1960s he presented a number of lectures and poetry readings in Dublin Dublin ...
- Thomas Kinsella - John Montague -
Patrick Galvin Patrick Galvin (15 August 1927 – 10 May 2011) was an Irish poet, singer, playwright, and prose and screenwriter born in Cork's inner city. Biography Galvin was born in Cork in 1927 at a time of great political transition in Ireland. His moth ...
- Seán Lucy - Richard Weber - Sean O'Meara - James Simmons -
James Liddy James Liddy (1934–2008) was an Irish poet, born in Dublin, Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. I ...
- Rivers Carew - James McAuley - Desmond O'Grady -
Brendan Kennelly Timothy Brendan Kennelly (17 April 1936 – 17 October 2021), usually known as Brendan Kennelly, was an Irish poet and novelist. He was Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College Dublin until 2005. Following his retirement he was a Pr ...
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Rudi Holzapfel Rudolf Patrick (Rudi) Holzapfel (11 December 1938 in Paris, France – 6 February 2005 in Bonn, Germany) was an Irish poet and teacher. Early life His father, Rudolf Melander Holzapfel (1900–1982), was a Shakespeare scholar, expert on Old Mas ...
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Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (; 13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Michael Longley Michael Longley, (born 27 July 1939, Belfast, Northern Ireland), is an Anglo-Irish poet. Life and career One of twin boys, Michael Longley was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to English parents, Longley was educated at the Royal Belfast A ...
- Seamus Deane - Timothy Brownlow -
Michael Hartnett Michael Hartnett ( ga, Mícheál Ó hAirtnéide) (18 September 1941 – 13 October 1999) was an Irish poet who wrote in both English and Irish. He was one of the most significant voices in late 20th-century Irish writing and has been called " Mu ...
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Derek Mahon Derek Mahon (23 November 1941 – 1 October 2020) was an Irish poet. He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland but lived in a number of cities around the world. At his death it was noted that his, "influence in the Irish poetry community, lite ...
- Eilean Ni Chuilleanain - John F. Deane - John Ennis - Paul Durcan - Eavan Boland -
Hayden Murphy Hayden Murphy (born 1945) is an Irish editor, literary critic and poet. He was born in Dublin, and brought up there and in Limerick. He was educated at Blackrock College and Trinity College, Dublin. During 1967-78 he edited, published, and pers ...
- Tom McGurk - Richard Ryan -
Hugh Maxton Hugh Maxton (born 1947), alias W. J. McCormack, is an Irish poet and academic. Biography William (Bill) John McCormack was born near Aughrim, County Wicklow in 1947. His parents were Irene (née King) and Charles Elliott McCormack. His fath ...
- Frank Ormsby -
Peter Fallon Peter Fallon (23 February 1881 – 9 February 1956) was an Australian politician. He was born in Tamworth to brickmaker Joseph Patrick Fallon and Mary Ann Riley. He was a tailor, and was involved in the foundation of the Tailors' Union, ser ...
- Paul Muldoon - Thomas McCarthy - Aidan Carl Mathews. {{DEFAULTSORT:Penguin Poetry Anthologies Poetry anthologies Penguin Books book series