I've just been indulging myself with An Anthology of Modern Verse (Methuen, 1921). My Oxfam copy is from 1940, the 30th edition. Staggering to think of how popular it must have been. It's full of the famous: Chesterton and Belloc, Kipling, Hardy, Thomas. And people I've never heard of - and on this meagre evidence, rightly so: Fyleman, Hopewood, Turner. This anthology, obviously enormously popular, has one striking omission: Housman. It is curious but oddly satisfying to see Eliot, Hopkins, Graves, Lawrence, Hardy, Owen, Thomas, Yeats rubbing shoulders with Kipling, Masefield, Stevenson. But why no Housman? His work was current, hugely popular.
92 poets, of whom there are 14 women, most of whom are justly neglected - as indeed, are most of the men.
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