This is the first Penguin book of English poetry since John Heywood's edition in the 1950s. A revelatory new anthology of English verse, poems are ordered by date of composition rather than in monolithic slabs devoted to individual poets. Original spelling is used. There is a high proportion of anonymous poetry and also verse written on surfaces other than paper (inscriptions etc.). It gives a more comprehensive view of English verse in showing poems talking to each other. What is more, it is the first anthology of its scope to treat the 20th century in similar depth to earlier centuries.