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English Poetry, 600-1900

William Wordsworth, reproduced from Margaret Gillies' 1839 original

Works By Title | Works by Author A-K | Works by Author L-Z

Scope:

English Poetry, 600-1900, contains poems in English from Anglo-Saxon times to the end of the nineteenth century by writers from the British Isles. It covers the works of 1,257 named poets and many items by different anonymous hands. In the pre-1500 period alone there are more than 2000 separate chronicles, romances, lyrics, and miscellaneous poems. The Tudor and Jacobean period are represented by over 35,000 different poems and from the nineteenth century there are 80,000 poems. Overall the collection contains over 165,000 poems which have been drawn from about 4,500 separate printed sources.

The entire text of each poem is included. Any accompanying text written by the poet and forming an integral part of the poem, such as dedications, notes, argument, and epigraphs, is also generally included. Volume-specific front and back matter, such as advertisements, prefaces, introductions, editorial apparatus, dedicatory epistles, biographies, glossaries and indexes is usually excluded, as are some lengthy notes considered inessential to the understanding of a particular poem.

The bibliographic basis of English Poetry is the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (Cambridge UP, 1969-72). The database includes the works of those writers listed as poets by NCBEL, those writers whose main entry appears under another genre but who are cross-referenced to poetry and a few additional writers of poetry not cross-referenced, for example Emily Brontë and Aphra Behn. Works in English of Welsh, Scottish, and Irish poets are included. Poets who were active before 1900 are included but poets principally active in the twentieth century are excluded.

English Poetry aims to include as full a collection of the published works of each poet as possible. Certain categories of material have, however, as a general rule been excluded:

An Editorial Board selected the editions to be included in English Poetry. In general, texts contemporary with their authors were preferred, and when available, collected editions were used. For those poets whose established canon cannot be covered by contemporary printings, reliable later editions are included. Only a single version of each poem has usually been included, where possible favoring the author's final intentions. Exceptions to this rule have been made for significant revisions to major works, e.g. Wordsworth's Prelude. Some major variants of poems originally collected from different manuscripts or oral sources are also included. For instance, every version of all the ballads in the main text of Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 1882-98 appears. In addition to the works of individual poets certain landmark anthologies have been selected by the Editorial Board and are included in their entirety, e.g. Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 1765.

Access, Copyright, and Use:

This collection is restricted to use by the VIVA Community via license from Chadwyck-Healey/Pro-Quest Information and Learning.

Texts may be printed out to create hardcopy editions for teaching or research, providing that the rights of original copyright holders are not infringed. Such copyrights are clearly noticed in the headers for each work. Small extracts of texts may be downloaded to create databases for teaching, research and personal use, and may be incorporated in an article or essay for publication in a journal or collected work. Texts may not be used for publication in electronic formats whether on their own or with other texts or in modified form without written permission from Chadwyck-Healey. Such permission will not be unreasonably withheld. The publication of larger extracts of texts in printed form requires the written permission of Chadwyck-Healey.

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