Sonnet Central Bibliography

• Bender, Robert M., and Squier, Charles L. (eds) (1987) The Sonnet: An Anthology: A Comprehensive Selection of British and American Sonnets from the Renaissance to the Present, Washington Square Press, New York

Each time I turn back to this book, I am amazed at just how comprhensive it is for a small paperback. Also a helpful introduction, glosses, and background information.

• Blunden, Edmund, and Mellor, Bernard (eds) (1971) Wayside Sonnets, 1750-1850, Hong Kong University Press

This is a fascinating collection of little known sonnets. The editors have culled from books and periodicals a treasury of poems rarely if ever anthologized before or since. Their notes at the end illuminate the eccentricities of the poets and their time.

• Bold, Alan (1985) Longman Dictionary of Poets: The Lives and Works of 1001 Poets in the English Language, Longman Group Ltd, UK

A nice book to have around.

• Cruttwell, Patrick (1966) The English Sonnet, Longmans, Green & Co., London

This proved to be the most readable brief survey of the English sonnet. Cruttwell is refreshingly frank about his personal taste in sonnets (describing, for example, his dislike of Keats as "doubtless one of my own blind spots"). When discussing Shakespeare, he gives the sonnets themselves more space than his commentary. I gained a deeper appreciation of Philip Sidney from this little book.

• Eliot, T. S. (1962) George Herbert, Longmans, Green & Co., London

This brief introductory survey of Herbert's poetry is a monograph in the same series as the one on the English sonnet by Cruttwell above.

• Grafton, Carol Belanger (ed) (1992) Old-fashioned Illustrations of Books, Reading & Writing, Dover Publications, Inc., New York

Along with Famous Nineteenth Century Faces, my most-used clip art. A must for anyone with a literary web site.

• Graves, Alfred Perceval (ed) (1915) The Book of Irish Poetry, Frederick A. Stokes Co., New York
• Grundy, Joan (1960) The Poems of Henry Constable, Liverpool University Press

This book contains transcriptions of all of Constable's poems, an appendix of the questionable works published only in the 1594 edition of Diana, and valuable textual and biographical information.

• Hamilton, Edith (1940) Mythology, Little, Brown & Co., New York
• Hebel, J. William, and Hudson, Hoyt H. (1929) Poetry of the English Renaissance (1509-1660), Appleton-Century Crofts, Inc., New York

A treasure trove of well known and obscure poetry from this period. The omission of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton allows the editors to divert the reader with often overlooked poets such as Charles Best. There is also a generous selection of poems of unknown authorship.

• Hibberd, Dominic, and Onions, John (1986) Poetry of the Great War: An Anthology, St. Martin's Press, New York
• Kallich, Martin, Gray, Jack C., and Rodney, Robert M. (eds) (1973) A Book of the Sonnet, Twayne Publishers, Inc., New York

This anthology has a helpful Sonnet Criticism section, the source of some of the early critical quotes.

• Lavater, Louis (ed) (1926/1956) The Sonnet in Australasia, Angus and Robertson, Sydney
• Main, David M. (ed) (1889) A Treasury of English Sonnets, Worthington Co., New York

I have an American edition of this classic anthology. In addition to the texts of 463 sonnets, Main provides generous notes.

• Negri, Paul (ed) (1994) Great Sonnets, Dover Publications, Inc., New York

At one dollar for over 170 sonnets, this is the best bargain. Several of the sonneteers included in these pages--Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, to name a few--can be found in their own thrift paperback editions.

• Nicholson, D. H. S., and Lee, A. H. E. (eds) (1917) The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse, Oxford University Press, Oxford

This fascinating anthology led me to Henry Constable's Spiritual Sonnets and some other unexpected discoveries.

• Parsons, I. M. (ed) (1968) Men Who March Away: Poems of the First World War, The Viking Press, New York
• Peterson, Houston (ed) (1929) The Book of Sonnet Sequences, Longmans, Green and Co., New York

This is a rather idiosyncratic collection of sequences, ranging in quality from Shakespeare to the Victorian poet David Gray. Houston seems to have few qualms about abridging (and renumbering) Sidney's Astrophel and Stella, yet the book does bring together much of the greatest sonnet work.

• Rebholz, R. A. (ed) (1978) Sir Thomas Wyatt: The Complete Poems, Yale University Press
• Rice, Don (ed) (1991) Famous Nineteenth Century Faces, Art Direction Book Company, New York, NY

This is a great book of clip art and the source of drawings of 19th century poets included here.

• Saintsbury, George (1906) Minor Poets of the Caroline Period, Clarendon Press, Oxford
• Shawcross, John T. (1967) The Complete Poetry of John Donne, Doubleday & Co., Inc., New York
• Spiller, Michael R. G. (1992) The Development of the Sonnet: An Introduction, Routledge, New York

I enjoyed this book very much, especially Spiller's readings of early Italian sonnets by Giacomo da Lentino (c. 1210-after 1230), Guittone d'Arrezo (c.1230-1294), Cecco Angiolieri (c.1260-c.1312), and others. He uses numerous examples to illustrate how the "space" of the sonnet came to be used and points out that "its very high degree of patterning and predictability makes it able to absorb a great deal of disturbance inside..." (p. 30). Spiller traces changes in the persona, the "/I/" of the sonnet, from an eloquent social voice to Petrarch's "voice of a sigh." He draws some parallels between da Lentino, the first Italian sonneteer, and Wyatt, the first English one--both courtiers under "cultured and ruthless despots." He goes on to discuss the early English sonneteers, the intriguing and problematic /I/ of Shakespeare, and further adaptations of the sonnet form through the time of Milton. But I found the discussion of the sonnet's origins the most valuable, how the form originated and developed, gaining respect and prominence as it absorbed more subject matter. "It was only after the Renaissance that an aesthetic theory developed in which sublimity could be a quality of condensation, rather than expansion, of material" (p. 9).

• Stevenson, Burton Egbert (ed) (1918) The Home Book of Verse: American and English, 3rd Ed., Henry Holt and Co., New York

A massive volume that included some 19th century poems I'd seen nowhere else.

• Thwaite, Anthony (ed) (1985) Six Centuries of Verse, Methuen, Inc., New York

One of the most attractive and lavishly illustrated historical anthologies of poetry I've seen, from Chaucer to the 1980s.

• Wagner, Jennifer Ann (1996) A Moment's Monument: Revisionary Poetics and the Nineteenth-Century English Sonnet, Associated University Presses, Cranbury, NJ
• Ward, William (ed) (1894) The Poems of William Drummond of Hawthornden, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York
• White, Gertrude M., and Rosen, Joan G. (1972) A Moment's Monument: The Development of the Sonnet, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York

This is probably my favorite sonnet anthology. The editors are generous in their commentary (both in the amount of it and in the ability to find something interesting or redeeming in a wide variety of poems). White and Rosen draw interesting contrasts between writers and provide much helpful historical and biographical background.

• Willmott, Robert Aris (1854) The Works of George Herbert, D. Appleton & Co., New York