Bibliography / General Reading:

Much can be learned from reading the major poetry magazines, of which P.N.Review is the biggest and, on the whole, the best. Agenda publishes work of rather variable quality in both poetry and prose, but is discriminating in its choice of authors for special numbers. Poetry Review is professional and metropolitan, but subject to fads and fashions. There are many other magazines publishing poetry and articles of interest.

Classmarks for Royal Holloway library are given in square brackets. To check our holdings of these books, and to reserve items on short loan, log into ALEPH here.

Neil Corcoran, English Poetry since 1940, 1993 [828.1 COR]. Thoughtful, a bit indigestible, a mine of ideas.

• -, ed., The Chosen Ground: Essays on the Contemporary Poetry of Northern Ireland, Bridgend, 1992 [828.199416 CHO]. A bit miscellaneous, but mainly of high quality
• Robert Conquest, ed., New Lines, 1956 [828.108 CON]. Defining anthology of 'The Movement'.
• Martin Dodsworth, ed., The Survival of Poetry, 1970 [828.1 DOD]. Includes essays on Gunn, Hughes and Larkin. Necessarily dated.
• Douglas Dunn, ed., Two Decades of Irish Writing, 1975 [Univ. Lib.].
• Alastair Fowler, 'Poetry since 1950' in The Penguin History of Literature, Vol.7, The Twentieth Century, ed. Martin Dodsworth, 1994 [820.9 PEN]. The point of view is emphatically Scots and judgment throughout is lively. A good survey.
• John Haffenden, ed., Viewpoints: Poets in Conversation, 1981 [828.1 HAF]. Among those interviewed are Larkin, Heaney, Hill and Raine.
• Michael Hamburger, The Truth of Poetry: Tensions in Modern Poetry from Baudelaire to the Sixties, 1969, [809.104 HAM] enlarged 1982. A good introduction to the whole topic of 'modernity' in poetry. International coverage.
• Ian Hamilton ed. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry, 1994 [828.103 OXF]. A useful guide to British and American poetry of this century. Alphabetical arrangement.
• Robert Hewison, In Anger: Culture in the Cold War 1945-1960, 1981 [Univ. Lib.]. Together with its companion, a helpful guide to the historical and cultural background for the period.
• -, Too Much: Art and Society in the Sixties, 1960-1975, 1986 [Univ. Lib.].
• Peter Jones, and Michael Schmidt, eds., British Poetry since 1970: A Critical Survey, 1980 [828.1 BRI].
• P.R.King, Nine Contemporary Poets: A Critical Introduction, 1979. Larkin, Tomlinson Gunn and others
• Edward Larrissy, Reading Twentieth-Century Poetry: The Language of Gender and Objects, 1990. Looks at most of our poets, but the book is crudely theorized.
• Blake Morrison, The Movement: English Poetry and Fiction of the 1950s, 1980 [828.9 MOR]. How it looked thirty years later. A bit weak on the poetry.
• John Press, A Map of Modern English Verse, 1969 [828.1 PRE]. Note the date; this does not go far into our period, but gives a context.
• Anthony Thwaite, Poetry Today: A Critical Guide to British Poetry 1960-1984, 1985 [828.1 THW]. Runs through the orthodox repertoire quite fully but with restrictive brevity.
• Charles Tomlinson, 'Some Aspects of Poetry since the War', The New Pelican Guide to English Literature, Vol.8, The Present, ed. Boris Ford, 1983, revised 1995 [820.9 PEL]. Excellent and wide-ranging.
• Hugo Williams, Freelancing: Adventures of a Poet, 1995 [on order]. Very funny notes on the life of a contemporary poet. From his fortnightly column in the TLS.