This famous work was the result of the wartime collaboration of two Scottish scholars. Their tracing of the course of English poetry has been described by The Times Literary Supplement as a 'volume of masterly compression'. They deliberately spend most time on the greatest poets, believing that, significant as traditions and influences are, the great poet himself affects the spirit of his age and moulds the tradition he has inherited. At the same time, enough attention is paid to minor poets to make the book historically complete, and to fill in the most important links in the chain of poetic development. Thus Gower is here, as well as Chaucer; Patmore, as well as Browning. Both in scope and in detail A Critical History of English Poetry is a distinguished and valuable work.

Sir Herbert Grierson was born in 1866. Educated at King's College, Aberdeen, and Christ Church, Oxford, he was Professor of English Literature at Aberdeen University from 1894 to 1915, and at Edinburgh University from 1915 to 1935. His most famous publications include Metaphysical Poets: Donne to Butler and Cross Currents in the Literature of the Seventeenth Century. He died in 1960.

James Cruickshank Smith was born in 1867, and educated at Edinburgh University and Trinity College, Oxford. He was Chief Inspector of Schools in Scotland from 1927 to 1932, received two honorary doctorates, and was acting Professor of English Literature at Edinburgh University in 1932-3. Among his works are several editions of Shakespeare's plays and of Spenser's poetry. He died in 1946.

Prefatory Note
1 Anglo-Saxon Poetry
2 Early Middle English Poetry
3 Chaucer, Gower and Langland
4 English Poetry from Chaucer to Skelton
5 Early Scottish Poetry
6 The Tudor Renaissance
7 Spenser, Sidney, and their Circle
8 Elizabethan Poetry
9 The Jacobeans
10 Shakespeare's Predecessors
11 Shakespeare
12 Shakespeare's Contemporaries and Successors in Drama
13 The Carolines
14 Milton
15 Cowley to Dryden
16 The Age of Pope and other Augustans
17 Thomson to Cowper
18 Cowper
19 Crabbe
20 The Revival of Scottish Poetry
21 Burns
22 The Revolutionary Age
23 Blake
24 Wordsworth and Coleridge: Early Poems and Lyrical Ballads
25 Wordsworth and Coleridge: Early Poems and Lyrical Ballads
25 Wordsworth and Coleridge: Later Poems
26 Scott
27 Byron
28 Shelley
29 Keats
30 Landor to Tennyson
31 The Early Victorians, 1: Tennyson
32 The Early Victorians, 2: Robert Browning
33 The Early Victorians, 3: Mrs Browning and Others
34 Mid-Victorian Poetry, 1: Arnold, Clough, and Kingsley
35 Mid-Victorian Poetry, 2: The Pre-Raphaelite Group
36 Mid-Victorian Poetry, 3: Patmore, Thomson, and Other Minors
37 Mid-Victorian Poetry, 4: Meredith and Hardy
38 The Nineties
39 Twentieth-century Poetry, 1: The Pre-War Years, 1901-14
40 Twentieth-century Poetry, 2: The War Years, 1914-18
41 Twentieth-century Poetry, 2: Between the Wars, 1919-39
A Select Bibliography
Index