Download or read book The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse written by Roger Lonsdale and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 913 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No previous anthology has succeeded in illustrating so thoroughly the kinds of verse actually written in the eighteenth century. The familiar tradition is fully represented by selections from such poets as Pope, Swift, Tomson, Gray, Smart, Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, and Blake. In addition, the anthology includes verse by many forgotten writers, both men and women, from all levels of society. Although they have never figured in conventional literary history, they wrote humorous, idiosyncratic, and graphic verse about their personal experience and the world around them, in a way that should challenge received ideas about the period's restraints and inhibitions.