The Ultimate Poetry Collection: Poetry of War, Romantic Poetry, Victorian Poetry

Thomas Hardy · Samuel Taylor Coleridge · William Blake · William Wordsworth · WB Yeats · Lord Alfred Tennyson · Siegfried Sassoon · John Keats · Dante Gabriel Rossetti · Ted Hughes · Percy Bysshe Shelley · Wilfred Owen

Nov 2020 · William Collins · Narrated by Sir John Gielgud, Richard Burton, Gwen Watford, and full cast

About this audiobook

William Collins Books and Decca Records are proud to present ARGO Classics, a historic catalogue of classic fiction read by some of the world’s most renowned voices. Originally released as vinyl records, these expertly abridged and remastered stories are now available to download for the first time.

A collection of the greatest poetry from the Romantic period, the battlefield, and the Victorian era, read by some of the 20th century’s most renowned actors.

Themes of war, love, nature, sexuality, and much more are played out in these timeless readings of poetry from the 19th and 20th century.

Performed by Sir John Gielgud; Richard Burton; William Squire; Richard Marquand; Peggy Ashcroft; Margaretta Scott; Tony Church; Derek Godfrey; Patrick Garland; Gary Watson; Margaretta Scott; and Janette Richer; Gwen Watford; and David King.

This collection includes poems from:
• William Wordsworth
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• William Blake
• Thomas Hardy
• WB Yeats
• Robert Browning
• Lord Alfred Tennyson
• Christina Rossetti
• Lord Byron
• Wilfred Owen
• Siegfried Sassoon
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• John Keats
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• Ted Hughes

About the author

Ted Hughes was born on August 17, 1930 in England and attended Cambridge University, where he became interested in anthropology and folklore. These interests would have a profound effect on his poetry. In 1956, Hughes married famed poet Sylvia Plath. He taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst from 1957 until 1959, and he stopped writing altogether for several years after Plath's suicide in 1963. Hughes's poetry is highly marked by harsh and savage language and depictions, emphasizing the animal quality of life. He soon developed a creature called Crow who appeared in several volumes of poetry including A Crow Hymn and Crow Wakes. A creature of mythic proportions, Crow symbolizes the victim, the outcast, and a witness to life and destruction. Hughes's other works also created controversy because of their style, manner, and matter, but he has won numerous honors, including the Somerset Maugham Award in 1960, and the Queen's Medal for Poetry in 1974. His greatest honor came in 1984, when he was named Poet Laureate of England. Ted Hughes died in 1998.