Celebrating seven centuries of English verse, this definitive anthology reflects the wonderfully diverse voices and concerns of successive generations of poets and the evolving poetic landscape through the ages. Its acclaimed revolutionary structure redefines the idea of the poetry anthology, presenting the works in the order in which they first appeared, rather than divided by poet. Through the words of the well known and the anonymous, in epitaphs, ballads, and folk and nonsense poems, The Penguin Book of English Verse reveals the whole tradition in an exhilarating new light.This edition includes a preface by Paul Keegan, setting out his innovative organizational principles, and indexes of poets, first lines and titles.