The Treasuries
Poetry Anthologies and the Making of British Culture
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:2nd Feb '23
Should be back in stock very soon
The history of poetry anthologies and their influence on British society and culture over the last four centuries.
The fascinating history of poetry anthologies and their influence on British society and culture over the last four centuries. For hundreds of years, anthologies have shaped the way we encounter literature. Eighteenth-century children and young women were introduced to the 'safe' bits of Shakespeare or Milton through censored collections; Victorian working-class men and women enrolled at adult learning institutions to be taught from The Golden Treasury; First World War soldiers nursed copies of The Oxford Book of English Verse in the trenches; pop-loving teenagers growing up in the 1960s got their first taste of the counterculture from the bestselling The Mersey Sound. But anthologies aren't just part of literary history. Over the centuries, they have influenced the course of British social change, redrawing the map of 'high' and 'low' culture, generating conversations around politics, morality, class, gender and belief. The Treasuries, by the literary scholar and journalist Clare Bucknell, reveals the extraordinary amount we can learn about our history from the anthologies that brought readers together and changed the way they thought.
Anthologies are the sleepers of the bookshelf, loaded with the hidden ideals and prejudices of their compilers. Clare Bucknell reads expertly between their lines to reveal a remarkable alternative history of literature. -- Rosemary Hill
The delight of this book is its expert toggling of scale. Bucknell dissects large issues - politics, class, taste, education - via small vignettes: Palgrave collecting his poems with scissors, war poems falling like bombs, poetry on prescription. Her panoramic history throws up unexpected parallels - the Exclusion Crisis and the Spanish Civil War, Keats and working men’s eduction, ballads and pop. Treasuries is smart and learned but unpatronising: it sparkles with appreciation for the anthologist and their always-partial act of selection. -- Emma Smith * author of Portable Magic *
Impressive in its coverage of social history, teeming with anecdotes, The Treasuries arrives just as Britain is once more rearranging its literary heritage and 'retelling favourite stories about itself at a moment of national crisis'. -- Peter Conrad
Clare Bucknell is a compelling storyteller as well as a deep and cheerful scholar. A riveting read, The Treasuries changes how a reader approaches the designing and sometimes devious anthologists and the books they sell us. -- Michael Schmidt
This book is a wonderful celebration and examination of anthologies as the cornerstone of our literary culture. -- Ian McMillan
A dazzling book — the more so because it is its author’s first... Bucknell’s book enhances its subject at every turn, and promises well for her future as a critic. * John Carey, The Sunday Times *
ISBN: 9781800241442
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
352 pages