An Eton Poetry Book
Encyclopedia
An Eton Poetry Book is an anthology edited by Cyril Alington
and George Lyttelton
, with an introduction by A. C. Benson
. The editors' intentions were "to provide poems which boys might reasonably be expected to like" and "to awaken their metrical sense." The book was published in 1925, with a second impression in 1927 and a third in 1938.
from 1917 to 1933. Lyttelton was an Eton master from 1908 to 1945. Both men were classicists
, but both had a deep love of English literature, which they sought to pass on to their pupils.
In choosing the poems for their anthology, Alington and Lyttelton adopted the following principles:
The book was first published by Macmillan
in London in 1925, with a second impression in 1927 and a third in 1938.
, the octosyllabic couplet, the sonnet
, the trochaic metre, the dactylic or anapaestic metre, classical metres, and miscellaneous. The sections, and the poems within them, are introduced with brief background notes, putting them in context.
The heroic couplet
This section begins with excerpts from Chaucer
's The Canterbury Tales
and continues with works or parts of works from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, ending with two anonymous parodies, possibly written by one or both of the editors. In addition to works by the famous names of English poetry, there are verses by lesser known writers such as Thomas Tickell
, and by an American, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The octosyllabic couplet
For the second section, the editors chose to begin with less well-known verses by Chaucer than The Canterbury Tales: The Hous of Fame
and The Book of the Duchess
e. They include a short example of eupheuism by John Lyly
, and continue with a mixture of famous and less famous writers, the latter including Thomas Carew
, Richard Crashaw
and Charles Churchill. The final poem in this section is "Leisure", by W. H. Davies
: "What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare."
The sonnet
The celebrated writers of English sonnets are included: Philip Sidney
, Michael Drayton
, William Shakespeare
and John Milton
, with later offerings by William Wordsworth
, Percy Bysshe Shelley
and John Keats
. The editors also include works by poets less known for writing sonnets, including George Meredith
, William Morris
and Rupert Brooke
. The section ends with Brooke's "The Soldier": "If I should die, think only this of me, That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England".
The trochaic metre
The editors introduce this section by admitting that "the trochaic metre has not by itself played an important part in our literature ... Tennyson
wrote 'Locksley Hall
' in trochaics because Mr Hallam
told him that the English people liked the metre, but it is very doubtful if he was right." There are fewer poems in this section by the best known names in English poetry, but Alington and Lyttelton include William Blake
's "The Tiger" and Rudyard Kipling
's "A Smuggler's Song": "Five and twenty ponies, Trotting through the dark".
The dactylic or anapaestic metre
Though agreeing that the metre is "almost indispensable for comic purposes", the editors also selected serious examples, by among others Matthew Prior
, Isaac Watts
and Robert Browning
– "The Lost Leader
": "Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat". Nonetheless the poet most represented in this section is Edward Lear
, with "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat", "The Quangle Wangle's Hat" and "How Pleasant to Know Mr Lear".
Classical metres
In their introduction to this section, the editors acknowledge that English hexameters and pentameters are, by the nature of modern ideas of scansion, not strictly comparable with classical examples. They extend this caveat to other modern languages: "Goethe's pentameter 'Habe ich Rose-strumpf gehasst and Violet-strumpf dazu' is probably the worst ever written in any language." The English specimens they print include works by Tennyson, Arthur Hugh Clough
and Charles Kingsley
.
Miscellaneous
The editors admitted, "Our classification of metres is confessedly of the roughest, and the large section headed 'Miscellaneous' is in itself a confession of our humility if not of our ignorance". Once again they begin their choice with Chaucer, who is followed by a large selection of English, Scottish, Irish and American verse in a wide variety of metres and shapes. In this section, Alington and Lyttelton included poets as diverse as Edmund Spenser
, the two Sir Walter Raleighs
, Ben Jonson
, Robert Herrick
and twentieth century poets including John Masefield
and W. B. Yeats, alongside writers of comic verse such as A. D. Godley
and W. S. Gilbert
, who is represented by three lyrics from the Savoy Operas. This is the largest section of the anthology, and it was praised by the reviewer of The Manchester Guardian as the most likely to fulfil the editors' wish to attract young people's interest.
and Augustan satires, of the Elizabethan sonnets, and of Myers's 'St Paul' is hardly to the ordinary boy. Indeed, it is the compilers' own conviction that 'many boys are definitely hindered from appreciating poetry by being introduced too soon to poems the beauty of which is beyond their grasp.' What then of Drayton's great sonnet, or Meredith's 'Lucifer in Starlight', or Donne
's 'An Anatomy of the World', or Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale', or Browning
's 'My Last Duchess', to mention no more?".
In 1959, the publisher Rupert Hart-Davis
wrote of the book, "There can never have been a better anthology for stirring boys' enthusiasm". Lyttelton replied, "It is, I think, out of print now, and never had very much of a sale. Macmillan's didn't do much about it and I always maintained that its title was against it, but Cyril Alington insisted on it. It is true the relevance of it is not very clear. My copy always opens at 'Little Orphant Annie
' which I tried to eliminate, but Cyril was mysteriously keen on it. One or two reviews rightly derided it, but mostly such reviews as the book got were quite cordial. One infuriated me. I did practically all of the stuff about the poems and poets, and some ass regretted that readers should be 'told what to think about them'. As no doubt you (and everyone else with eyes) saw, the main gist was to record what had been thought or said about them, very often inviting readers to differ".
Cyril Alington
Cyril Argentine Alington was an English educationalist, scholar, cleric, and prolific author. He was the headmaster of both Shrewsbury School and Eton College. He also served as chaplain to King George V and as Dean of Durham....
and George Lyttelton
George William Lyttelton
The Hon George William Lyttelton was a British teacher and littérateur. Known in his lifetime as an inspiring teacher of classics and English literature at Eton, and an avid sportsman and sports writer, he became known to a wider audience with the posthumous publication of his letters, which...
, with an introduction by A. C. Benson
A. C. Benson
Arthur Christopher Benson was an English essayist, poet, and author and the 28th Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge....
. The editors' intentions were "to provide poems which boys might reasonably be expected to like" and "to awaken their metrical sense." The book was published in 1925, with a second impression in 1927 and a third in 1938.
Background
Alington was Head Master of EtonEton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
from 1917 to 1933. Lyttelton was an Eton master from 1908 to 1945. Both men were classicists
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
, but both had a deep love of English literature, which they sought to pass on to their pupils.
In choosing the poems for their anthology, Alington and Lyttelton adopted the following principles:
- to exclude poetry likely to be beyond the grasp of boys;
- to exclude poetry which might appeal to the young but would be repugnant to them in later life;
- to exclude blank verse ("partly because blank verse is appreciably harder to learn by heart, and partly from a desire to keep the book within reasonable limits"); and
- to include favoured excerpts from long works.
The book was first published by Macmillan
Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...
in London in 1925, with a second impression in 1927 and a third in 1938.
Poems selected
Following their declared wish to awaken boys' metrical sense, the editors grouped their selections into seven sections, the heroic coupletHeroic couplet
A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used for epic and narrative poetry; it refers to poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter lines. The rhyme is always masculine. Use of the heroic couplet was first pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer in...
, the octosyllabic couplet, the sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
, the trochaic metre, the dactylic or anapaestic metre, classical metres, and miscellaneous. The sections, and the poems within them, are introduced with brief background notes, putting them in context.
The heroic couplet
This section begins with excerpts from Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
's The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...
and continues with works or parts of works from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, ending with two anonymous parodies, possibly written by one or both of the editors. In addition to works by the famous names of English poetry, there are verses by lesser known writers such as Thomas Tickell
Thomas Tickell
Thomas Tickell was a minor English poet and man of letters.-Life:The son of a clergyman, he was born at Bridekirk near Cockermouth, Cumberland. He was educated at St Bees School 1695-1701, and in 1701 entered the Queen's College, Oxford, taking his M.A. degree in 1709...
, and by an American, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. was an American physician, professor, lecturer, and author. Regarded by his peers as one of the best writers of the 19th century, he is considered a member of the Fireside Poets. His most famous prose works are the "Breakfast-Table" series, which began with The Autocrat...
The octosyllabic couplet
For the second section, the editors chose to begin with less well-known verses by Chaucer than The Canterbury Tales: The Hous of Fame
The House of Fame
The House of Fame is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer, probably written between 1379 and 1380, making it one of his earlier works.-Overview:The House of Fame is over 2,000 lines long in three books and takes the form of a dream vision composed in octosyllabic couplets. Upon falling asleep the poet finds...
and The Book of the Duchess
The Book of the Duchess
The Book of the Duchess, also known as The Deth of Blaunche, Encyclopædia Britannica, 1910. Accessed March 11, 2008. is the earliest of Chaucer’s major poems, preceded only by his short poem, "An ABC," and possibly by his translation of The Romaunt of the Rose...
e. They include a short example of eupheuism by John Lyly
John Lyly
John Lyly was an English writer, best known for his books Euphues,The Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and His England. Lyly's linguistic style, originating in his first books, is known as Euphuism.-Biography:John Lyly was born in Kent, England, in 1553/1554...
, and continue with a mixture of famous and less famous writers, the latter including Thomas Carew
Thomas Carew
Thomas Carew was an English poet, among the 'Cavalier' group of Caroline poets.-Biography:He was the son of Sir Matthew Carew, master in chancery, and his wife, Alice daughter of Sir John Rivers, Lord Mayor of the City of London and widow of Ingpen...
, Richard Crashaw
Richard Crashaw
Richard Crashaw , English poet, styled "the divine," was part of the Seventeenth-century Metaphysical School of poets.-Life:...
and Charles Churchill. The final poem in this section is "Leisure", by W. H. Davies
W. H. Davies
William Henry Davies or W. H. Davies was a Welsh poet and writer. Davies spent a significant part of his life as a tramp or vagabond in the United States and United Kingdom, but became known as one of the most popular poets of his time...
: "What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare."
The sonnet
The celebrated writers of English sonnets are included: Philip Sidney
Philip Sidney
Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan Age...
, Michael Drayton
Michael Drayton
Michael Drayton was an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era.-Early life:He was born at Hartshill, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. Almost nothing is known about his early life, beyond the fact that in 1580 he was in the service of Thomas Goodere of Collingham,...
, William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
and John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
, with later offerings by William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
, Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
and John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
. The editors also include works by poets less known for writing sonnets, including George Meredith
George Meredith
George Meredith, OM was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era.- Life :Meredith was born in Portsmouth, England, a son and grandson of naval outfitters. His mother died when he was five. At the age of 14 he was sent to a Moravian School in Neuwied, Germany, where he remained for two...
, William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
and Rupert Brooke
Rupert Brooke
Rupert Chawner Brooke was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially The Soldier...
. The section ends with Brooke's "The Soldier": "If I should die, think only this of me, That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England".
The trochaic metre
The editors introduce this section by admitting that "the trochaic metre has not by itself played an important part in our literature ... Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language....
wrote 'Locksley Hall
Locksley Hall
"Locksley Hall" is a poem written by Alfred Tennyson in 1835 and published in his 1842 volume of Poems. Though one of his masterworks, it is less well-known than his other literature...
' in trochaics because Mr Hallam
Arthur Hallam
Arthur Henry Hallam was an English poet, best known as the subject of a major work, In Memoriam A.H.H., by his best friend and fellow poet, Alfred Tennyson...
told him that the English people liked the metre, but it is very doubtful if he was right." There are fewer poems in this section by the best known names in English poetry, but Alington and Lyttelton include William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
's "The Tiger" and Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
's "A Smuggler's Song": "Five and twenty ponies, Trotting through the dark".
The dactylic or anapaestic metre
Though agreeing that the metre is "almost indispensable for comic purposes", the editors also selected serious examples, by among others Matthew Prior
Matthew Prior
Matthew Prior was an English poet and diplomat.Prior was the son of a Nonconformist joiner at Wimborne Minster, East Dorset. His father moved to London, and sent him to Westminster School, under Dr. Busby. On his father's death, he left school, and was cared for by his uncle, a vintner in Channel...
, Isaac Watts
Isaac Watts
Isaac Watts was an English hymnwriter, theologian and logician. A prolific and popular hymnwriter, he was recognised as the "Father of English Hymnody", credited with some 750 hymns...
and Robert Browning
Robert Browning
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...
– "The Lost Leader
The Lost Leader (poem)
The Lost Leader is a poem by Robert Browning. It berates William Wordsworth, for what Browning considered his desertion of the liberal cause, and his lapse from his high idealism. More generally, it is an attack on any liberal leader who has deserted his cause. It is one of Browning's "best known,...
": "Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat". Nonetheless the poet most represented in this section is Edward Lear
Edward Lear
Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised.-Biography:...
, with "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat", "The Quangle Wangle's Hat" and "How Pleasant to Know Mr Lear".
Classical metres
In their introduction to this section, the editors acknowledge that English hexameters and pentameters are, by the nature of modern ideas of scansion, not strictly comparable with classical examples. They extend this caveat to other modern languages: "Goethe's pentameter 'Habe ich Rose-strumpf gehasst and Violet-strumpf dazu' is probably the worst ever written in any language." The English specimens they print include works by Tennyson, Arthur Hugh Clough
Arthur Hugh Clough
Arthur Hugh Clough was an English poet, an educationalist, and the devoted assistant to ground-breaking nurse Florence Nightingale...
and Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley was an English priest of the Church of England, university professor, historian and novelist, particularly associated with the West Country and northeast Hampshire.-Life and character:...
.
Miscellaneous
The editors admitted, "Our classification of metres is confessedly of the roughest, and the large section headed 'Miscellaneous' is in itself a confession of our humility if not of our ignorance". Once again they begin their choice with Chaucer, who is followed by a large selection of English, Scottish, Irish and American verse in a wide variety of metres and shapes. In this section, Alington and Lyttelton included poets as diverse as Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
, the two Sir Walter Raleighs
Walter Raleigh (disambiguation)
Walter Raleigh was an English writer, poet, soldier, courtier and explorer.Walter Raleigh may also refer to:*Walter Raleigh , Scottish scholar, poet and author*Walter Raleigh Dean of Wells, 1642-1644-Other uses of name:...
, Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
, Robert Herrick
Robert Herrick (poet)
Robert Herrick was a 17th-century English poet.-Early life:Born in Cheapside, London, he was the seventh child and fourth son of Julia Stone and Nicholas Herrick, a prosperous goldsmith....
and twentieth century poets including John Masefield
John Masefield
John Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...
and W. B. Yeats, alongside writers of comic verse such as A. D. Godley
A. D. Godley
Alfred Denis Godley was a classical scholar and author of humorous poems. From 1910 to 1920 he was Public Orator at the University of Oxford, a post that involved composing citations in Latin for the recipients of honorary degrees. One of these was for Thomas Hardy who received an Honorary D. Litt...
and W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
, who is represented by three lyrics from the Savoy Operas. This is the largest section of the anthology, and it was praised by the reviewer of The Manchester Guardian as the most likely to fulfil the editors' wish to attract young people's interest.
Reception
Reviewing the book in 1925, The Manchester Guardian wrote, "The book is indeed a treasury of great and beautiful things, and there are very many that the ordinary boy can hardly help liking. But ... the appeal of the RestorationRestoration literature
Restoration literature is the English literature written during the historical period commonly referred to as the English Restoration , which corresponds to the last years of the direct Stuart reign in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland...
and Augustan satires, of the Elizabethan sonnets, and of Myers's 'St Paul' is hardly to the ordinary boy. Indeed, it is the compilers' own conviction that 'many boys are definitely hindered from appreciating poetry by being introduced too soon to poems the beauty of which is beyond their grasp.' What then of Drayton's great sonnet, or Meredith's 'Lucifer in Starlight', or Donne
John Donne
John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...
's 'An Anatomy of the World', or Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale', or Browning
Robert Browning
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...
's 'My Last Duchess', to mention no more?".
In 1959, the publisher Rupert Hart-Davis
Rupert Hart-Davis
Sir Rupert Charles Hart-Davis was an English publisher, editor and man of letters. He founded the publishing company Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd...
wrote of the book, "There can never have been a better anthology for stirring boys' enthusiasm". Lyttelton replied, "It is, I think, out of print now, and never had very much of a sale. Macmillan's didn't do much about it and I always maintained that its title was against it, but Cyril Alington insisted on it. It is true the relevance of it is not very clear. My copy always opens at 'Little Orphant Annie
Little Orphant Annie
"Little Orphant Annie" is an 1885 poem written by James Whitcomb Riley and published by the Bowen-Merrill Company. First titled "The Elf Child", Riley changed the name to "Little Orphant Allie" at its third printing, however a typecasting error during printing renamed the poem to its current form...
' which I tried to eliminate, but Cyril was mysteriously keen on it. One or two reviews rightly derided it, but mostly such reviews as the book got were quite cordial. One infuriated me. I did practically all of the stuff about the poems and poets, and some ass regretted that readers should be 'told what to think about them'. As no doubt you (and everyone else with eyes) saw, the main gist was to record what had been thought or said about them, very often inviting readers to differ".