I cannot comment on the poetry content because I am bad at poetry but I'll say a few things about the anthology.

The glosses provided for obscure words are too rare - this is particularly a problem with the earliest poems. The spelling has sometimes been modernised but sometimes not and it leaves some words very confusing and the whole poem near impossible to understand.

There are no meaningful notes on meaning or context and for many poems there's no comment on source. Poems aren't ever given a year of composition which makes context even harder to discern sometimes.

There's no contents or an index of poem titles - I realise this isn't always possible but it'd still be useful. There's just an index of poets and first lines. Which is useful! But sometimes you need other things too.

The book feels like it REALLY overweights earlier poets from Elizabethan times etc. There *feels* like there's fewer modern poets than you'd expect. Maybe I'm wrong on that. The entirety of the Wasteland is reproduced so that's something I guess. I dunno

I know books like these rarely have notes etc but still. It's hard for a poetry newbie to get into some of this stuff.

I didn't exactly finish but maybe read like 20%? Which I think isn't unreasonable. I find poetry hard to get into but yeah there are obviously good poems here. Not gonna rate because I can't really judge but keeping the above criticisms in mind it's probably not ideal if you're not good with poetry

A superior collection, in my mind, to the original Oxford Book of English Verse edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. ( )

Not a revision of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's classic selection, but a new anthology. The editor explains in her Preface why she deliberately did not include American poets, with the one exception of Ezra Pound.

If one had to say where can you find in fewer than 1,000 pages the best of English poetry, here it is. Daily Telegraph

`by far the most balanced and most wide-ranging [anthology] we have, offering superlative value to almost every taste' The Times

`Dame Helen has seen through this enormous task with affection, wit and wonderful thoroughness.' Times Literary Supplement

`Her knowledge of English poetry is both extensive and intensive; her critical standards are eminently worthy of respect...The reading public has every reason to be grateful to her.' Critical Quarterly

`The book remains a continuous and rewarding pleasure...It is a cause of wonder how easily poems of the recent past fit with those written centuries ago without jarring or disturbance.' New York Times