Anthologized Dilemma

247 9. Anthologized Di 1emma Robert Barnard Martin (ed). VICTORIAN POETRY: TEN MAJOR POETS, New York: Random House, 1964. $8,95. The ten major poets in this anthology are Tennyson, Robert Browning, Arnold, Meredith, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Thomas Hardy, Hopkins, and A. E. Housman. It is in some ways a curious collection for a Victorian anthology. The earliest Hardy poem printed here is dated 1898, the latest 1925; the earliest Housman is from a collection of 1896 and the latest from one of 1936. Stephens, Beck, and Snow, the editors of another anthology, get around the problem by entitling their collection VICTORIAN AND LATER ENGLISH POETS. One wonders whether Mr. Martin might not have done better to include Robert Bridges, who published far more poetry during the Victorian period than Hardy, or Arthur Hugh Clough, who is unquestionably of the period, or Elizabeth Barrect Browning, or Emily Bronte. One wonders whether the two Rossettis warrant as much space as, together, they get in this collection. While ί do not think that Kipling belongs in a book of Victorian poetry either, I do wonder that he is omittad while Hardy and Housman are included. Perhaps William Morris is not a great poet by the standard of Tennyson and Browning but he v.ould seem to justify representation, even at the sacrifice of one of the Rossettis, While the ten authors in this collection are well enough represented and often represented by long pocrcs, I do not think this volume makes for a very representative selection of Victorian poetry. Purdue University H. E. Gerber 10. Moody and Lovett: The Eighth Edi tion William Vaughn Moody and Robert Morss Lovett, A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 8th ed. Revised by Fred B. Mil lett. New York: Scribner's, 1964. $2.95. Paper. This volume, originally published in 1902 and frequently revised during the lives of the original authors, has not had a major revision of the text since 1943, when Robert Morss Lovett was still living. The 7th ed of 1956 was prepared by Fred B. Millett, who revised only Chapter XVII and the bibliographies at that time. The present edition has not benefited by as much revision as the preceding one. Here, again, only the text of the last chapter has been revised and only the bibliographies for the last two chapters. It has thus been at least twenty years since the whole text has been significantly revised and eight years since the bibliographies have been thoroughly up-dated. While this volume still remains a very useful tool for the general student and while there probably have been no violent revolutions in attitude toward the earlier literature to warrant a general revision of the entire text and all the bibliographies, the revision of only the bibliographies for the literature after 1900 is not adequate. The publisher and the present editor surely cannot hope to get much more mileage out of the text sections and of bibliographies for the 18th and 19th centuries than they have already gotten. Even in the bibliographies for Chapter XVI I see very little evidenceof a rosily careful attempt to take account of important works published between I956 and, say, I963, although a few works published as recently as I96O62 are listed. One hopes the next edition, with a thoroughly revised text, at least for the period from the 18th century on, and a full-scale revision of all the bibliographies, will be forthcoming in somewhat less than another eight years. Purdue University H. E. Gerber ...