Poems for Love: A New Anthology

by Joanna Trollope (introduction), Gaby Morgan (Editor)

Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautifully bound pocket-sized gift editions of much loved classic titles. Bound in real cloth, printed on high quality paper, and featuring ribbon markers and gilt edges, Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

There has always been love, and we have been writing poetry about it for over 4,000 years. A complex and truly timeless emotion, love – whether passion or heartbreak, infatuation or flirtation – has provoked some of the greatest names in literature to write verse of outstanding beauty.

From John Donne and William Shakespeare to Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti, the very best classic love poetry is collected in this elegant Macmillan Collector’s Library anthology. That we still read and enjoy these heartfelt poems today is a testament both to their individual genius, and to the enduring power of love.

Poems for Love features an introduction by bestselling author, and Romantic Novelist Association prize-winner, Joanna Trollope.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Classics

160 pages, Hardcover

Published January 2, 2018

About the author

Joanna Trollope Potter Curteis (aka Caroline Harvey)

Joanna Trollope was born on 9 December 1943 in her grandfather's rectory in Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire, England, daughter of Rosemary Hodson and Arthur George Cecil Trollope. She is the eldest of three siblings. She is a fifth-generation niece of the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope and is a cousin of the writer and broadcaster James Trollope. She was educated at Reigate County School for Girls followed by St Hugh's College, Oxford. On 14 May 1966, she married the banker David Roger William Potter, they had two daughters, Antonia and Louise, and on 1983 they divorced. In 1985, she remarried to the television dramatist Ian Curteis, and became the stepmother of two stepsons; they divorced in 2001.

From 1965 to 1967, she worked at the Foreign Office. From 1967 to 1979, she was employed in a number of teaching posts before she became a writer full-time in 1980. Her novel Parson Harding's Daughter won in 1980 the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association.

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems cross centuries, from about 1500s to 1930s. Took me a year to finish, and to thoroughly enjoy each poem as I read through the anthology. I marked 33 of them, out of maybe 150, as noteworthy and personal favorites. They’re listed below. I’m not surprised most of my favorites range between the year 1800-1920; my favorite century of literary fiction. I’m even more curious to graph it out with specific dates and see what the average year of poems would happen to be my preference.

To a Friend - Amy Lowell
Love and Friendship - Emily Brontë
Answer to s Child’s Question - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Madam, Will You Walk - Anon.
A Red, Red Rose - Robert Burns
She Walks in Beauty - Lord Bryon
To a Stranger - Walt Whitman
First Love - John Clare
The First Day - Christina Rossetti
Episode of Hands - Hart Crane
Scarborough Fair - Anon.
A Thunderstorm in Town - Thomas Hardy
A Birthday - Christina Rossetti
Sonnet 18 - William Shakespeare
‘Come into the Garden, Maud’ - Tennyson
Sonnet - Elizabeth B Browning
My Woman - Catullus
Love and Sleep - A.C. Swinburne
A Decade - Amy Lowell
The Owl and the Pussycat - Edward Lear
Now You Will Feel No Rain - Apache Wedding Song
‘If thou must love me...’ - EB Browning
‘How do I love thee’ - EB Browning
‘Although I conquer all the earth’ - Anon
The Bargain - Sir Philip Sidney
Fidelity- DH Lawrence
Epitaph...Sir William Dyer - Lady Catherine Dyer
When you are old - WB Yeats
To Eros - Wilfred Owen
‘So we’ll go no more a roving’ - Lord Byron
‘How many paltry, foolish, painted things’ - Michael Drayton
I So Liked Spring - Charlotte Mew
‘Sigh no more, ladies...’ - Shakespeare

[Slinkysnake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me trying to be smooth:

You're very much like the sun
You look hot from a far off distance
But I'm like heat in the UK
So will stay distant

Very romantic in sections, but like all poetry, what pulls each person is personal to them. It's not really fair to criticise what I find to be less than charming

(but to be unfair anyway "let's stick around together" from Walt Whitman is memorable only in sounding like an unconvincing line from a 90s Owen Wilson comedy)

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nice, little collection of love poems. I'd have mine on my nightstand and read one before bed most nights. I also love the covers of these Macmillan Collector's Library editions, very pretty.

[Weronika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Czy da się ocenić poezje? O miłości...

[Tess Liebregts · Rating 3 out of 5]

I originally bought this bundle to gather a collection of poems to send my partner in order to tell them how much I love them. Figures, all these poems are not very lovey dovey. Turns out great poems about love are generally about the loss of it or the possible upcoming loss of it. A bummer, but they were all still very very great. A fine addition for my Gothic soul that loves a tragedy.

[Bryan Fox · Rating 2 out of 5]

They say that love is a timeless emotion, but - whoo boy! - the poems in this collection were dated as fuck. So many "O!'s", and "thees" and "thines". So many inversions and uses of the subjunctive. And who knew a poem - had to rhyme? Not I, Dear Reader.

Maybe if at least a few of these had been written in the past 150 years, the selection could have seemed more relevant. Shall I compare thee to a tired cliché? Thou art loose, and worn.

[Just Hind · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bless every poet in this little book. I love poetry... and I still love Shakespeare so much and understand his words the most. Anyway, so glad to finish these love poems and I hope I can quote them someday to someone.

[Katie Tremelling · Rating 3 out of 5]

We got this book as a wedding present and have read a poem every night since, folding the corner of the page on the ones we liked the most. It’s a good little anthology, but rated in the middle as wasn’t impressed with the lack of poetry written after 1900

[Hayley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like these pocket size Macmillan Collector’s Library editions. This is a great collection of love poems ranging from first love, marriage and death of a loved one, etc. Some of my favourite poems are to be found in this edition and I found quite a few others that I really liked.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[fatima · Rating 1 out of 5]

should’ve known poetry was not for me.

[Joyce Wang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haven’t really read a collection of poems after uni. Suddenly was in the mood for it. It is a beautiful collection. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

[Klaudia Maciejowski]

something about super old love poems just doesn’t click with me, not my fav. No rating.

[Yasmin Guliyeva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cried like a million times going through this. Truly the most human experience

[Fee Schellekens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing special, but fun poems

[Hope · Rating 3 out of 5]

would’ve loved if it went a bit further into 1900s