Product details
- ISBN 9781841598369
- Weight: 500g
- Dimensions: 108 x 166mm
- Publication Date: 10 Sep 2026
- Publisher: Everyman
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Hesiod (Work and Days) and Virgil’s Georgics set the scene in the early pages with their poetry about farming, while nymphs and shepherds cavort through the Arcadian landscapes of Theocritus, ushering in the pastoral genre. Appropriately the book ends with Alice Oswald, whose much admired nature poetry reflects the influence of classical poets.
From Chaucer onwards English poetry is full of the countryside. Here are plenty of fine examples from major poets, including Shakespeare, Spenser and Sidney; Jonson and Milton; Pope, Gray and Blake; Tennyson, Hopkins and Housman; Robert Frost, Edward Thomas, Ivor Gurney and Dylan Thomas. Alongside them, editor Paul Quarrie has placed some delightful gems from poets less well-known – Ambrose Philips’s ‘Description of Winter’, Margaret Cavendish’s ‘A Landscape’, James Henry’s ‘The Pleasure of Pigeons’ and poems by Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Mew, John Davidson and Kim Taplin, to name but a few. A lively choice of folk songs and anonymous poems about farming life adds to the mix, as do telling extracts from longer poems penned in the 18th century - the peak period for rural poetry.
Paul Rogan Quarrie has been for more than fifty years well known in the world of antiquarian books as librarian (notably of Eton College), lecturer at UCL, Senior Director of Sotheby's Department of Books and Manuscripts, and latterly as a consultant for Maggs, dealers in rare books and MSS. His publications include Winchester College and the King James Bible and a chapter on the publication of classical texts in volume I of the History of the Oxford University Press. He edited Horace for Everyman's Library in 2015 and Poems from Greek Antiquity in 2020 (Pocket Poet series).
