1st Edition
Revival: English Poetry: An unfinished history (1938) An unfinished history
When a Poet writes poetry he can scarcely fail to interest. And the author of this posthumous volume was not only a poet but no mean critic too. As a result, his approach to English Poetry is not a work of merely casual interest: it is illuminating. No one could fail to be enriched and delighted by its discriminating enthusiasms, its happy quotations, and the no less happy judgements, discoveries, definitions and phrases which it gives us.
The historical portion is contained in the latter half, which deals with its subject in a discursive way from the beginnings to Elizabethan times - where the author stopped in the middle of a sentence. This premature ending is deepy regretted. But, fortunately for us, the first five chapters are devoted to general and personal observations, and are so full of references to the intervening and modern periods that we can genuinely claim to have here a fair impression of Drinkwater's view of the whole panorama of English Poetry.
Chapter I Design
Chapter II The Nature and Function of Poetry
Chapter III Poetry and Prose
Chapter IV Reading Poetry
Chapter V As it was in the Beginning
Chapter VI Poetry and Narrative (1)
Chapter VII Poetry and Narrative (2)
Chpater VIII Early Lyric
Chapter IX Elizabethan Lyric. The Love Poetry
Chapter X Elizabethan Lyric. Other Themes
Chapter XI Poetry and Dogma
Chapter XII Warton Lecture on English Poetry
Biography
John Drinkwater
