Little History of Poetry by John Carey

Little History of Poetry

$15.00
$15.00
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Little History of Poetry by John Carey
  • Little History of Poetry by John Carey
Little History of Poetry

Yale University Press

Little History of Poetry

$15.00
$15.00

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A vital guide to poetry from ancient times to the present

Poetry is language made special, so that it will be remembered and valued. It does not always work - over the centuries countless thousands of poems have been forgotten. This Little History is about some that have not.

John Carey tells the stories behind the world's greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly 4,000 years ago to those being written today. Carey looks at poets whose works shape our view of the world - such as Shakespeare, Whitman and Yeats - and more recent poets like Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, and Marianne Moore who have started to question what makes a poem 'great' in the first place.

Little Histories - Inspiring Guides for Curious Minds
Book Details
Publisher:
Yale University Press
ISBN:
9780300283426
Binding:
Paperback
Pages:
320
Authors:
John Carey
Published Date:
2025-05-13
Language:
English
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All Poetry Anthologies John Carey

About John Carey

John Carey (1934–2025) was a literary critic and academic who held the Merton Professorship of English Literature at the University of Oxford from 1975 to 2002 and served as chief book reviewer for The Sunday Times. Born in Barnes, west London, he read English at St John's College, Oxford, and wrote his doctorate on Donne. His books include The Violent Effigy (1973), John Donne: Life, Mind and Art (1981), The Intellectuals and the Masses (1992) and What Good Are the Arts? (2005). He twice chaired the judges of the Booker Prize. A Little History of Poetry (2020) and 100 Poets: A Little Anthology (2021) came late in a long career of writing about poetry rather than writing it.

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