The Oxford Book of Sonnets

About this book

Alive and well after 450 years in English the 14-line sonnet is perhaps the best-loved and most versatile of poetic forms. Poets ranging from Shakespeare to Alice Oswald have found it the perfect choice for the expression of intense but controlled feelings. Beginning with Wyatt and ending in the present day The Oxford Book of Sonnets is a unique treasury of memorable sonnet reflections on love and life. In a beautiful one-poem-per-page design Shakespeares marriage of true minds rubs shoulders with John Davies of Herefrods the late ABC of love Keats stout Cortez with Darleys Manrique. Women poets who revived the sonnet in eighteenth century are restored to prominence and modern poets as diverse as Seamus Heaney Carol Ann Duffy and Simon Armitage are well represented. After an expository introduction that traces the sonnet in English from its appearance in the Tudor Court of the sixteenth century through its various historical reinterpretations and eras of popularity 328 sonnets are arranged in order of the birth date of the poets. Thus readers have a formidable guide to both the evolution of sonnet writing in English and the distinct voices of major and minor poets that have accepted the forms challenges and expressive power. This book also includes examples of the sonnet sequence as well as more unusual experimentation with form such as Sylvesters quadruple acrostic sonnets to his patron and Leigh Hunts Iterating Sonnet. In addition to the aforementioned poets this collection includes sterling works by Sir Philip Sidney George Chapman John Donne Lady Mary Wroth George Herbert John Milton Aphra Behn William Wordsworth Samuel Taylor Coleridge Percy Bysshe Shelley Alfred Lord Tennyson Robert Browning Matthew Arnold Dante Gabriel Rossetti Christina Rossetti Thomas Hardy Gerard Manley Hopkins Oscar Wilde William Butler Yeats Robert Frost Siegrfried Sassoon Edna St Vincent Millay Aldous Huxley Dylan Thomas Derek Walcott Seamus Heaney and many more.