A Little History of Poetry

[The] book reviewer and Oxford don has great fun, galloping through 4,000 years of verse. Reputations are flayed and poetic gems are uncovered.Robbie Millen and Andrew Holgate, The Times and Sunday Times, Best Books of 2020 [A] fizzing, exhilarating bookSebastian Faulks, Sunday Times Careys delightful survey never takes itself or its subject too seriously. Over the centuries countless thousands of poems have been forgotten, he writes. This is a book about some that have not.New York Times Book Review Dont let the diminutive title fool you. This is an expansive, not to mention accessible, tour of poetrys importance and evolution, from Beowulf to Shakespeare to Maya Angelou and beyond.Washington Post 2020 Holiday Gift Guide Few modern literature professors are capable of writing a book as interesting and mischievous as this.James Marriott, The Times Best Literary Non-Fiction Books of 2020 This supremely compact and erudite introduction doesnt just pack in a bunch of facts and potted biographies, it somehow manages to convey the transcendent glory of the form through the ages, whether its sagas, hymns, ballads or verse...Carey is frighteningly well informed but always accessible, and this guide will offer riches whether youre a total newbie or a poetry buff.Sybille Bedford, The Sunday Times 'Best Literary Books of 2020' This characterfully compered mini-anthology would make a great guide for anyone just beginning to explore poetry, at any age.David Sexton, Evening Standard Carey is a welcoming host, full of enthusiasmHe can throw sparkling light on a poets method in a handful of words.Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday ExhilaratingBel Mooney, Daily Mail [A] short but impressively comprehensive account of poetryDuncan Ferguson, The Herald [F]or more than 50 years, his taut, spry, flexible, idiomatic style has enabled [Carey] to engage a large non-specialist audience without, for the most part, stinting his deep infectious belief that literature is serious, and matters.Leo Robson, New Statesman A Little History of Poetry succeedsbecause it communicates Carey's love for a poet clearly and infectiously. It would be a dull reader who did not finish the chapter on Chaucer with an itch to reopen "The Miller's Tale", yes, but even Troilus and Criseyde as well.Harry Cochrane, Times Literary Supplement A Little History of Poetry is delightful and succinct: 40 perceptive chapters in 295 pages, covering nearly 200 poetsStill, the book is a history a history of poetry and the contexts in which it is embedded: personal, cultural, religious, social, linguistic, political.Brian B. McClorry SJ, Thinking Faith [online journal] Does anyone know more about poetry than John Carey? Almost certainly not.The Times, Best Books for Summer 2020 [A] dazzling bookJohn Carey has been writing brilliant, eminently readable literary criticism for as long as most of us can remember.Roger Alton, Daily Mail Chapters are enticingly short and compelling to read. Carey is immensely readable with so many poets work and biography underpinned with illustrative personal stories and fascinating observations.Word Matters [Journal] John Carey, the "Unexpected Professor", has done it again. From Homer to Heaney in 300 pages of crisp prose, apt quotation and illuminating judgement, he shows how poets have dealt with politics, race, religion, thought, landscape, history, memory and the movement of the human heart.Piers Plowright, The Tablet Carey is excellent at sketching biographies, quoting judiciously and generously, and keen to be explanatory without being patronising: you can see in the use of anecdote and analogy the experience of years lecturing to drifting undergraduates.Seamu

John Carey is emeritus professor at Oxford. His books include The Essential Paradise Lost, What Good Are the Arts?, studies of Donne and Dickens, and a biography of William Golding. The Unexpected Professor, his memoir, was a Sunday Times best-seller.