Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology (Blackwell Annotated Anthologies) [Hardcover]

Christine Gerrard (Author), David Fairer (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 063120623X | ISBN-13: 978-0631206231 | Publication Date: November 16, 1998 | Edition: 1

This eagerly awaited annotated anthology reveals the rich variety of poetic output in a period, 1700-1800, that is rapidly growing in popularity among scholars and students alike.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The volume, handsomely produced, is annotated economically, with a sure instinct for what a reader will find puzzling, whilst the headnotes are compact, informative and lucid. The balance of the famous and the obscure is perfectly struck." English Studies

Book Description

For the second edition of this popular collection, the political and satirical content of the Anthology has been strengthened, with the inclusion of poems such as Charles Churchill's Night, Samuel Johnson's London and Swift's A Satirical Elegy on a Late Famous General. The revised edition also features work by two additional women poets, Martha Fowke and Sarah Dixon. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell; 1 edition (November 16, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 063120623X
• ISBN-13: 978-0631206231
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,552,023 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but occasionally frustrating anthology, February 25, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology (Blackwell Annotated Anthologies) (Paperback)

Good anthologies of eighteenth-century poetry are hard to come by, so when I taught a course on the subject I naturally leaped at this book. But while its coverage is admirable, reflecting new interest in both women poets (Leapor, Barbauld, Seward) and underread male poets (Chatterton, Dyer, Parnell), the book nevertheless was difficult to teach. Annotation and historical backgroud proved inadequate even for advanced English majors, particularly given the classics-heavy subject matter. Too, some editorial policies proved frustrating, particularly the decision to delete or sharply abridge the original footnotes from Gay's *The Shepherd's Week* and Pope's *The Dunciad*--omissions that fatally obscure both poems' satiric intentions. Nevertheless, the emphasis on full-length poems over excerpts is welcome (one area in which the book notably improves on its primary competition, Lonsdale's two Oxford anthologies). It's hardly a bad book--quite the contrary--but it could stand some thoughtful revision.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best of its kind, June 3, 2009

By 

M. Lotto "ML" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology (Blackwell Annotated Anthologies) (Paperback)

I've been teaching 18th and 19th century poetry courses for a few years and this anthology is the best I've found. The editorial choices favor the canon, as an anthology should. Many full texts of major poems are included, but so are texts of poems often overlooked but vital to a comprehensive survey. There are long excerpts of Thompson's The Seasons, for example, which very few anthologies think to include because it is a somewhat mind-numbing read and *hard* to teach to undergraduates; it is by far one of the most important poems of the early c18 decades. Because the anthology accounts for both a poem's initial reception and its teachability, it surpasses the competition.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reshaping the Eighteenth-Century Canon, June 9, 2003

By 

"melkerseyiii" (Denver, CO

Dunedin New Zealand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology (Blackwell Annotated Anthologies) (Paperback)

In Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology, David Fairer and Christine Gerrard have created an important portable library. The contents have been organized in a variety of useful ways (chronologically as well as thematically) and insightfully selected to cover a range of voices and topics. The annotations stand up to repeated readings; the scholarship displays a rare mixture of subtlety and depth of knowledge. Although it is an invaluable teaching tool for undergraduates, I keep it on my desk as an accessible and meticulously accurate reference resource. There is no finer work of its kind.