Christopher Ricks, ed.: The Oxford Book of English Verse (1999)•
Christopher Ricks (1933- )Christopher Ricks: The Oxford Book of English Verse (1999)
[Xanadu Books, Tauranga - 26/11/2019]:
Ricks, Christopher, ed. The Oxford Book of English Verse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Sir Christopher Ricks has been described (by W. H. Auden) as “the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding” and by a pseudonymous former student as “the kind of professor you would have if you went to Hogwarts”.- Leo Robson: 'Christopher Ricks: “Criticism is being good at noticing things".'
(The New Statesman, 13 July 2021)
I'm not sure that he'd be terribly flattered by the "Hogwarts" reference, but certainly Christopher Ricks is quite a considerable figure: witness the fact that I've written about him twice already on this blog - once about his editing of the Penguin English Poets series, and again about his wonderful Longmans edition of Tennyson - which shows, at the very least, the importance he holds for me.
I've never met him, but one of the Professors I knew at Edinburgh, Aidan Day (whom I'm very sorry to see died a couple of years ago at the early age of 66), was a student and subsequently colleague and collaborator with him on the 31-volume Tennyson archive. He shared Ricks's interest in Bob Dylan, and in fact wrote a rather po-faced book entitled Jokerman: Reading the Lyrics of Bob Dylan (1988), which actually earned him a coveted spot as Private Eye's "Pseud of the week."
Aidan Day was a very nice man - a little humourless, but friendly and hospitable to errant Doctoral students. The fact that Ricks is still teaching in his late 80s implies that he, too, values such interaction with his students. For the most part, though, it's on the page that we're forced to judge him.
I picked up a copy of his 1999 revisionist Oxford Book of English Verse at that immense print warehouse Xanadu Books, located in an industrial estate just outside of Tauranga. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's original anthology had already been updated once, by Helen Gardner's New Oxford Book of English Verse in 1972.
Ricks had something even more radical in mind, however - though it's doubtful that his version of the national canon has reached nearly as many people as Q's - or even Helen Gardner's, for that matter.
There is something fascinating about such anthology wars: who's been left out, who's been put in - what's been underrepresented in the past and therefore needs reemphasis, what's been done to death and therefore needs cutting back ... the subject is as open-ended (and potentially inexhaustible) as speculative theology.
Thinking about it has inspired me to make a list of all the Oxford Books of various types I myself own. I've arranged these under a number of headings: chronological, national, and thematic verse, on the one hand, and prose, on the other, for want of a better system of classification. I think the sheer number of them I've collected shows just how fascinating I find the form.
I guess it shows, also, how assiduously the editors at Oxford University Press have pursued it, ever since the surely unexpected breakaway success of the old man's initial effort:
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Celia & Kenneth Sisam, ed. The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse (1150-1500) (1970)Oxford Books of Verse
(& Prose)
Categories:
- Sisam, Celia & Kenneth Sisam, ed. The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse (1150-1500). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.
- Sisam, Kenneth, ed. Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose. 1921 / Tolkien, J. R. R. A Middle English Vocabulary. 1922. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962.
- Robbins, Rossell Hope, ed. Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries. 1952. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.
- Chambers, E. K., ed. The Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse. 1932. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950.
- Grierson, H. J. C. & G. Bullough, ed. The Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse. 1934. London: Oxford University Press, 1976.
- Nichol Smith, David, ed. The Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse. 1926. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963.
- Milford, H. S., ed. The Oxford Book of Regency Verse, 1798-1837. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928.
- Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur, ed. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913.
- Hayward, John, ed. The Oxford Book of Nineteenth Century Verse. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.
- Yeats, W. B., ed. The Oxford Book of Modern Verse: 1892-1935. 1936. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947.
- Yeats, W. B., ed. The Oxford Book of Modern Verse: 1892-1935. 1936. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966.
- Larkin, Philip, ed. The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse. 1973. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974.
- Larkin, Philip, ed. The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse. 1973. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.
- Palgrave, Francis Turner, ed. The Golden Treasure of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language. 1861. With Additional Poems to the Present Day: Annotated Edition. 1914. London: Geoffrey Cumberlege / Oxford University Press, 1953.
- Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur, ed. The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900. 1900. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912.
- Stodart-Walker, A., ed. The Moxford Book of English Verse: 1340-1913. London: Everleigh Nash, 1913.
- Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur, ed. The Oxford Book of English Verse. 1900. New Edition 1250-1918. 1939. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1948.
- Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur, ed. The Oxford Book of English Verse. 1900. New Edition. 1250-1918. 1939. London: Book Club Associates, 1968.
- Gardner, Helen, ed. The New Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1950. 1972. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
- Ricks, Christopher, ed. The Oxford Book of English Verse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
- Lucas, St. John, ed. The Oxford Book of French Verse, xiiith Century-xxth Century. 1907. Oxford: Clarendon Press / London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, 1946.
- Higham, T. F., & C. M. Bowra, ed. The Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938.
- MacQueen, John & Tom Scott, ed. The Oxford Book of Scottish Verse. 1966. London: Oxford University Press, 1981.
- Poole, Adrian, & Jeremy Maule, ed. The Oxford Book of Classical Verse. 1995. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
- Amis, Kingsley, ed. The New Oxford Book of Light Verse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.
- Auden, W. H., ed. The Oxford Book of Light Verse. 1938. London: Oxford University Press, 1973.
- Dearmer, Percy, R. Vaughan Williams & Martin Shaw, ed. The Oxford Book of Carols. 1928. London: Geoffrey Cumberlege / Oxford University Press, 1950.
- Dixon, W. MacNeile & H. J. C. Grierson, ed. The English Parnassus: An Anthology Chiefly of Longer Poems. 1909. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1943.
- Hall, Donald, ed. The Oxford Book of Children’s Verse in America. 1985. Oxford Paperbacks. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
- Kavanagh, P. J., & James Michie, ed. The Oxford Book of Short Poems. Book Club Associates by arrangement with Oxford University Press. London: Guild Publishers, 1985.
- Kinsley, James, ed. The Oxford Book of Ballads. 1969. Oxford Paperbacks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
- Nicholson, D. H. S. & A. H. E. Lee, ed. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse (XIII-XX Centuries). 1917. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927.
- Opie, Iona & Peter, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes. 1951. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.
- Opie, Iona & Peter, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes. 1951. Rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
- Opie, Iona & Peter, ed. The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book. Illustrations by Joan Hassall. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955.
- Opie, Iona & Peter, ed. The Oxford Book of Children’s Verse. 1973. London: Book Club Associates, 1978.
- Opie, Iona & Peter, ed. The Oxford Book of Narrative Verse. 1983. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
- Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur, ed. The Oxford Book of Ballads. 1910. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1930.
- Stallworthy, Jon, ed. The Oxford Book of War Poetry. 1984. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
- Tomlinson, Charles, ed. The Oxford Book of Verse in English Translation. 1980. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
- Woods, Frederick, ed. The Oxford Book of English Traditional Verse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
- Sutherland, James, ed. The Oxford Book of English Talk. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953.
- Sutherland, James, ed. The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes. 1975. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
- Hastings, Max, ed. The Oxford Book of Military Anecdotes. Book Club Associates by arrangement with Oxford University Press. London: Guild Publishing, 1985.
- Cox, Michael, & R. A. Gilbert, ed. The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories. 1986. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
- Muir, Frank, ed. The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose, From William Caxton to P. G. Wodehouse: A Conducted Tour. 1990. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
- Baldick, Chris, ed. The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales. 1992. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
- Gross, John, ed. The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
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- category - English Poetry (pre-1900): Nineteenth Century
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