The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250?1900 is an extensive curated anthology that aims to represent the sweep and variety of English poetry across more than six centuries. Edited by A. T. Quiller-Couch, the collection arranges poems roughly chronologically and includes medieval anonymous lyrics and ballads, major Renaissance poets, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century lyricists and satirists, and the principal nineteenth-century voices. The editor provides brief headnotes and an ordering intended both to teach and to please: readers meet devotional lyrics, pastoral and metaphysical verse, heroic and narrative poems, sonnets and shorter lyrics, and many examples of popular balladry. The anthology also contains useful indexes (index of authors and index of first lines in many printings) making it a practical reference as well as a reader?s treasury. It was long influential in shaping school and popular taste, printed in many impressions and formats.