This two-volume anthology celebrates four centuries of English poetry from the Elizabethan era to the present day. Within the first volume are the Elizabethan poets (Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare), the Metaphysical poets (Donne, Herbert, Marvell), and many other famous figures of the 17th and 18th centuries including Milton, Swift, Pope, and Gray. The second volume begins with William Blake and includes many of the Romantic poets (Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Coleridge), and gives a survey of 19th-century verse including that of Tennyson, Browning, Hopkins, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, with poets from the 20th century being represented by poets such as Graves, Betjeman, Larkin, Hughes, and Heaney. The anthology also offers a varied sampling from the less well-known poets who have often provided startling exceptions to the poetry of their age. The richness and variety of the English poetic tradition are represented in this leather bound edition by all the great and familiar names resulting in a testament to the depth, diversity and energy of poetry written in Britain and Ireland.