The New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse [Paperback]

Jerome J. McGann (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 7, 1994

The poets whom we call the Romantics - Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burns and Blake, Byron, Shelley, and Keats - belonged to an age that saw many other kinds of poetry written and published. In this new anthology, Jerome McGann explores the full range of verse that was published in Britain between the years 1785 and 1832. Selections from all the major and minor Romantic poets are included, as well as important political and satiric verse of the period, the continuing tradition of `sentimental' verse, regional and dialect verse, and verse in translation. Organizing his material by date of first appearance, and not by author grouping, Professor McGann calls attention to the historical and cultural contexts in which the poetry is embedded. Old familiar poems are thrown into new relationships, and traditional views of the poetry of the period challenged. An important feature of this anthology is the space it devotes to women poets. Felica Dorothea Hemans was one of the most widely published and read poets of the nineteenth century, and here she takes her rightful place together with Ann Yearsley, Laeticia Borbauld, Mary Tighe, Lady Morgan, Laeticia Elizabeth Landon, and other distinguished female writers. In his introduction the editor discusses the concept of romantic writing, and the true diversity it contains. The manifesto of the romantic movement, Wordsworth's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads , is here printed in an appendix. This book is intended for lovers of English Romantic Verse; students of Romantic literature, undergraduate level and up.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Review from previous edition "Maybe Jerome McGann's new volume of Romantic Period verse will attract chief attention through the notice it gives to the women, and justly so. Here is the spirit of that splendid revolutionary age, recalled in its minute details and all its glory."--Times Educational Supplement

"there are great things here and some intriguing oddities"--The Observer

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

About the Editor:
Jerome J. McGann is Commonwealth Professor at the University of Virginia. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the Romantic period, including Towards a Literature of Knowledge and the Oxford Authors Byron.

Product Details

• Paperback: 864 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 7, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192823299
• ISBN-13: 978-0192823298
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,006,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Important Anthology of English Romantic Poetry, May 20, 2000

By 

David Caploe (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse (Paperback)

Let me begin by noting my own orientation: as director of a humanities-based MA program in Media Studies, I teach a core course in Western Cultural History, and have been looking for sourcebooks in several areas -- English Romantic poetry being one of them, European Baroque painting, and Impressionism are two important others -- that would give students a profound and extensive immersion in the works of these periods (it being my job to put those works into context).

In that framework, I have found the New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse to be far and away the most useful in its area.

First and foremost, the selection is nearly comprehensive. Practically every important poem of the period is included, and a number of interesting but much less well-known works too.

This is generally a good thing, of course, but especially so when it comes to Romantic poetry, as what makes this period so powerful and engaging is the fact that so many crucial verse works appeared during this time, so the more the students (and others) can juxtapose them, the better sense of both the individual poems AND the period as a whole they will receive.

This is reinforced by the method of presentation, which is fundamentally chronological -- i.e., the poems are arrayed by the year in which they first appeared, and only within that year by author, if the writer produced several during that time.

This is quite innovative and tremendously useful, especially for my purposes, but, I would argue, even in general, as a chronological approach necessarily gives the reader (student or not) a strong sense of the historical relationship among these works -- an approach that I, at least, think is far more important than many others apparently do today -- and is valid for understanding painting and other cultural phenomena as well.

Having praised the near-comprehensiveness, and innovative chronological mode of presentation, there are certain flaws here.

The main substantive one is the way-too-abstruse tone and content of the introduction.

Having made such an advance by presenting the poems in roughly chronological order, the editor should have continued with the instinct towards accessibility and understanding.

Why write a stuffy and not very interesting academically-oriented introduction, when he could have written instead a clear piece that would help the uninitiated understand the chief issues involved in Romantic poetry, while, at the same time, offering within that framework insights that would be intriguing for experts in the field?

This is not that hard to do, although most academics -- Simon Schama and Michael Wood being notable exceptions in the cultural history field -- seem to have a problem with this approach.

From a methodological point of view, finally, it seems a little strange not to have included certain very important works -- notably Wordsworth's Prelude, but also others -- simply because they were not published during the period in question (1785-1832, a choice of years that in and of itself seems quite appropriate).

When dealing with well-known works like the Prelude, or Keats' "'Lear'," or Blake's "4 Zoas" or Shelley's "Epipsychidion," it seems bizarre not to include them during the years they were written, with little asterisks indicating that they were not published, but written, at that time.

These issues aside, this is a wonderful collection that will be incredibly useful for anyone with any reason at all to be concerned with English Romantic poetry -- which, in my view, should be all of us.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth a read, September 25, 2004

By 

Stephanie L. Wilde (San Jose, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse (Paperback)

One of the great merits of this anthology is that it includes a fairly wide variety of verse; not just poets that are still familiar to us today, but ones that were widely read during the times. Without slogging through an anthology like this, you may be familiar with "the big names", but never explore the context of their verse or find gems from lesser poets that strike you as interesting or meaningful. I picked up a few new favourites from this anthology and now have a better idea of which poets I wish to pursue more deeply. And the chronological organization is a nice prompt to considering how poetry developed throughout the period.

My main gripe, to echo Mr. Caploe, is the introduction. Although interesting, it was not very helpful to me as a relative newcomer to this period. Another nice addition would have been a biography, as textual notes were fairly sparse, generally indicating only where a piece was published.