This two-volume anthology celebrates four centuries of English poetry from the Elizabethan era to the present day. This, the second of the two volumes, covers poets from Blake to Heaney, and provides an excellent portrayal of a wide array of eighteenth- to twentieth-century poets.

Beginning with William Blake, Volume II covers many of the romantic poets, including Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. The works of Tennyson, Browning, Hopkins, and Lewis Carroll, are featured in a generous survey of nineteenth-century verse, and the twentieth-century is represented by poets such as Graves, Betjeman, Larkin, Hughes, and Heaney.