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English Romantic Verse
English Romantic poetry from its beginnings and its flowering to the first signs of its decadence
Nearly all the famous piéces de résistance will be found here—"Intimations of Immortality," "The Ancient Mariner," "The Tyger," excerpts from Don Juan— s well as some less familiar poems. As muchas possible, the poets are arranged in chronological order, and their poems in order of composition, beginning with eighteenth-century precursors such as Gray, Cowper, Burns, and Chatterton. Naturally, most space has been given over to the major Romantics—Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Clare, and Keats—although their successors, poets such as Beddoes and Poe, are included, too, as well as early poems by Tennyson and Browning. In an excellent introduction, David Wright discusses the Romantics as a historical phenomenon, and points out their central ideals and themes.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Nearly all the famous piéces de résistance will be found here—"Intimations of Immortality," "The Ancient Mariner," "The Tyger," excerpts from Don Juan— s well as some less familiar poems. As muchas possible, the poets are arranged in chronological order, and their poems in order of composition, beginning with eighteenth-century precursors such as Gray, Cowper, Burns, and Chatterton. Naturally, most space has been given over to the major Romantics—Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Clare, and Keats—although their successors, poets such as Beddoes and Poe, are included, too, as well as early poems by Tennyson and Browning. In an excellent introduction, David Wright discusses the Romantics as a historical phenomenon, and points out their central ideals and themes.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
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332 people want to read
About the author
David Wright
46 books3 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
David John Murray Wright was an author, poet and editor. He was born in South-Africa of normal hearing. When he was 7 years old he contracted scarlet fever and was deafened as a result of the disease. He immigrated to England at the age of 14, where he was enrolled in the Northampton School for the Deaf. He studied at Oriel College, Oxford, and graduated in 1942.
(Source: Wikipedia)
David John Murray Wright was an author, poet and editor. He was born in South-Africa of normal hearing. When he was 7 years old he contracted scarlet fever and was deafened as a result of the disease. He immigrated to England at the age of 14, where he was enrolled in the Northampton School for the Deaf. He studied at Oriel College, Oxford, and graduated in 1942.
(Source: Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
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January 21, 2022William wordsworth can go die in a lonely hole 6 page poem my ass
like poe's poems they kinda chill
like poe's poems they kinda chill
May 17, 2025
I wish I got off on life like these guys… Wtf was in their tea???
April 15, 2023
really great edition - perfect to dip in and out of and a good range of different poems: long and short, different subject matter. also handily organised by author - would be nice to be accompanied by a commentary but definitely outside the scope of the edition, and so this fulfils its role as a pocket anthology very well
December 11, 2012
A nice collection of works from various poetic heavy-hitters like Wordsworth and Coleridge. If you're looking for an introduction to this particular style and period of poetry, or if you need a thorough selection on the Romantic poets in one handy volume, this is a good book.
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November 22, 2024thoughts on each poet i am studying:
blake: I sympathise him but perhaps it comes from a place of pity because he had no friends (or wasn't close to the other 'main' poets)
Wordsworth: I think he tries a bit too hard
byron: he is my favorite so far and I understand why people loved him then and still love him now. so we'll go no more a roving is one of the best of all time
shelley: mary was better
keats: have not studied in depth yet but there is so much melancholy in that man. how much can one take before they implode?
blake: I sympathise him but perhaps it comes from a place of pity because he had no friends (or wasn't close to the other 'main' poets)
Wordsworth: I think he tries a bit too hard
byron: he is my favorite so far and I understand why people loved him then and still love him now. so we'll go no more a roving is one of the best of all time
shelley: mary was better
keats: have not studied in depth yet but there is so much melancholy in that man. how much can one take before they implode?
December 14, 2025
best topic ever with the worst teacher ever
August 30, 2015
That he chose lesser known works is one of the appeals of this book for me. How many anthologies do we need the same poems in?
April 20, 2020
Read it for school. I appreciate it but much prefer modern poetry!
December 26, 2022
lord byron’s writing > lord byron
May 15, 2024
did for my english class romantic poetry and oh my fucking god the odes can go k!ll themselves bro why they gotta be so fucking long
December 1, 2025
Another one of those 20th century poetry anthologies which has either zero or exactly one female author (Emily Brontë: because when you think Brontë, you think poetry, sure). It's almost comic, really.
No Christina Rossetti (Danté Gabriel Rossetti is here), no Elizabeth Barrett-Browning (Robert Browning is here). Did Wright squint and decide they were writing in the wrong genre for the collection? Did he call them gothic and not romantic? Unclear, but it makes him look daft, actually. It's that point where blatant exclusionary misogyny tips right over into laughable ignorance. Like when a terf insists on misgendering someone who doesn't look a bit like their birth sex. You actually just made yourself look stupid with your bigotry.
Shame Wright was being thick and skipped all the icky girly stuff, because otherwise this is a good attempt with a mostly decent introduction. I wonder if a more recent Penguin edition corrects for him embarrassing himself with a lack of academic rigour, and has a properly comprehensive corpus, because this simply isn't one.
No Christina Rossetti (Danté Gabriel Rossetti is here), no Elizabeth Barrett-Browning (Robert Browning is here). Did Wright squint and decide they were writing in the wrong genre for the collection? Did he call them gothic and not romantic? Unclear, but it makes him look daft, actually. It's that point where blatant exclusionary misogyny tips right over into laughable ignorance. Like when a terf insists on misgendering someone who doesn't look a bit like their birth sex. You actually just made yourself look stupid with your bigotry.
Shame Wright was being thick and skipped all the icky girly stuff, because otherwise this is a good attempt with a mostly decent introduction. I wonder if a more recent Penguin edition corrects for him embarrassing himself with a lack of academic rigour, and has a properly comprehensive corpus, because this simply isn't one.
August 4, 2023
I love romantic poetry!!! This book has all of the greats and classics in it, so it's essential for anyone who loves the romantics.
However, this book mainly focuses on the poets and poems everyone is already familiar with, rather than introducing the reader to underrated and unknown poets. Most poets that aren't Keats, Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth etc only have a poem or two in the collection, which is fine, but also means I didn't discover as many new poets as I had hoped.
There is also only one woman featured, Emily Bronte, and she only has four poems in the book.
TLDR: a good place where you can find all of the classics, but not as useful to discover more poets that you might not have heard of
However, this book mainly focuses on the poets and poems everyone is already familiar with, rather than introducing the reader to underrated and unknown poets. Most poets that aren't Keats, Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth etc only have a poem or two in the collection, which is fine, but also means I didn't discover as many new poets as I had hoped.
There is also only one woman featured, Emily Bronte, and she only has four poems in the book.
TLDR: a good place where you can find all of the classics, but not as useful to discover more poets that you might not have heard of
August 26, 2020
Who am I to judge a selection of poetry? I studied, discussed and analysed some of the poems in this anthology many years ago, but by no means read all of the writers represented here. So, a PSC challenge for an anthology brought me back to this. I have found some of the pieces moving, some difficult, some thoughtful, some clever and some possibly belonging to the William McGonagall school. A difficult read in terms of concentration - I haven't read poetry for some time - but I did look up most of the archaic terms that I didn't understand and engaged with some poems. Only one woman featured here, Emily Bronte, which, I suppose, given the time period is to be expected.
November 3, 2025
This selection of romantic poetry is comprehensive and yet precise, including the greatest hits alongside some lesser appreciated poems. It guides you, somewhat chronologically, through one of the most influential and profound eras of writing (and art as a whole), and is a perfect read for anyone wishing to feel a bit autumnal.
The introduction alone tells us as readers to trust David Wright’s control of the collection. He has an acute understating of the heart of romantic poetry, and its grander role in society both at time of writing and in the modern day.
My attention span probably let me down for some poems, but I can’t apply that as a critique to the collection really. This is a collection that does my favourite era of poetry a good justice.
The introduction alone tells us as readers to trust David Wright’s control of the collection. He has an acute understating of the heart of romantic poetry, and its grander role in society both at time of writing and in the modern day.
My attention span probably let me down for some poems, but I can’t apply that as a critique to the collection really. This is a collection that does my favourite era of poetry a good justice.
July 30, 2018
Im not a poem person. But I have to admmit this was good
February 22, 2024
God I love the romantics. They get me.
November 30, 2024
THIS is such a great start to read if you want to get into Romantic poetry I loved it!
March 19, 2025
Really really enjoyable anthology. I enjoyed a lot more than I would, and I look forward to reading more poetry in general
March 19, 2025
john keats i will die for you
byron i will kill you with a thousand suns, count you days, although you are already dead, thank god; hope you liked Greece.
byron i will kill you with a thousand suns, count you days, although you are already dead, thank god; hope you liked Greece.
June 19, 2025
i have been half in love with easeful death - john keats, ode to a nightingale
July 5, 2025
It is the crime of the century that “she walks in beauty” is not in this collection💔
December 20, 2025
Haven’t read it cover to cover but I dip into this one from time to time and always find something to interest me
December 21, 2024
I love you second-generation Romantics...
August 15, 2011
Hm.. having devoured this gem in 2 days, I'll be the first to say that it left a lot to be desired. On purpose, even. I feel almost as if this were analogous to buying a DVD only to find it's 90 minutes of trailers of other films. Which is ok, maybe then you know the ones you want to maybe watch fully at a later date. I had the feeling I'd read all of Keats, only to not recognize half of the ones here in this set. A major drawback is that there was no biographical details for each writer, nor a delineation inside the book between different eras of the movement, something that made the Penguin edition of HARLEM RENAISSANCE literature so good. Some of the writers died at a very young age and there's no explanation-- did Lord Byron kill himself? Seemingly so, when reading the last poem in his set and then referencing that with the dates of life found at the first page of his section.
The value, possibly, then seems to be the minor poets included here, that I would not have known otherwise, since the major works have only 15 pages maximum, and should really be read in their entirety anyway. But, as a whole, I'm feeling the magic, the set really grabbed me and didnt let go.
My favorites: Hither hither love, Robert Burns' Ye flowery banks, and William Blake surprised me, having set him aside in the past because I didnt get what made him such a hearthrob for the times. It's fun to see some of the Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean monsters here: the mandrake, and the Kraken.
Im glad that only a very small handful were very overtly Christian, I would have read them anyway, but would have spent the time arguing with the poet all the time.
The value, possibly, then seems to be the minor poets included here, that I would not have known otherwise, since the major works have only 15 pages maximum, and should really be read in their entirety anyway. But, as a whole, I'm feeling the magic, the set really grabbed me and didnt let go.
My favorites: Hither hither love, Robert Burns' Ye flowery banks, and William Blake surprised me, having set him aside in the past because I didnt get what made him such a hearthrob for the times. It's fun to see some of the Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean monsters here: the mandrake, and the Kraken.
Im glad that only a very small handful were very overtly Christian, I would have read them anyway, but would have spent the time arguing with the poet all the time.
June 22, 2021
Me and poetry have an interesting history. When I was a teenager I was taught in school that poems have to rhyme and that was it. I wasn't taught about "free verse" poetry, I could only find those in song lyrics, if they can be called so. Walt Whitman who?
So my teenage self who wrote angsty teen-poems wrote them mostly in rhyme. I tried to write freeverse poems, because when I had discovered that, I also discovered that rhyme and metered poems are "old" and "dusty", something old dudes or college professors like.
But writing freeverse wasn't challenging enough for me. It felt more like I was just gushing out my feelings on paper, while whenever I was writing rhymed and metered poetry, not only could I still talk about my feelings, I could also give it a rhytm. Like a song...
Anyway, I have fallen in and out of love of poetry more than I can remember. I have tried to read some contemporary poets but usually I don't feel like they have anything to say to me. Like I might understand their angst if I went to bed with them and got my answers? Maybe?
So the last year or so I have gone back to reading older poets: Lord Byron and Edgar Allan Poes poetry have been fascinating to me. So naturally I picked up this book of English Romantic Verse.
What did I think about it? It's a mixed bag, as with most anthologies. Some of these poems went right through the heart, while others just left me confused.
So my teenage self who wrote angsty teen-poems wrote them mostly in rhyme. I tried to write freeverse poems, because when I had discovered that, I also discovered that rhyme and metered poems are "old" and "dusty", something old dudes or college professors like.
But writing freeverse wasn't challenging enough for me. It felt more like I was just gushing out my feelings on paper, while whenever I was writing rhymed and metered poetry, not only could I still talk about my feelings, I could also give it a rhytm. Like a song...
Anyway, I have fallen in and out of love of poetry more than I can remember. I have tried to read some contemporary poets but usually I don't feel like they have anything to say to me. Like I might understand their angst if I went to bed with them and got my answers? Maybe?
So the last year or so I have gone back to reading older poets: Lord Byron and Edgar Allan Poes poetry have been fascinating to me. So naturally I picked up this book of English Romantic Verse.
What did I think about it? It's a mixed bag, as with most anthologies. Some of these poems went right through the heart, while others just left me confused.
January 4, 2014
The title is pretty much self explanatory. It was a good collection of romamtic poets although the author did not choose to put their most famous poems. What was a good idea was to put poets that we usually do not know a lot of as John Clare.
December 13, 2007
I love romantic poetry, yet I didn't think this was a good selection from these writers.
December 7, 2012
An excellent collection with lesser-known works by great Romantic poets.
December 13, 2017
The finest and most inspirational eras of English Literature
May 4, 2020
'O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?'
Read as part of my A Level studies; made me a big fan of the romantics as a rule.
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?'
Read as part of my A Level studies; made me a big fan of the romantics as a rule.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews