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Rating: 
Summary: A Defence of Poetry (anthology)
Review: ...This book is not a work of literary criticism or a critical biography. Critical anthologies do exist--William Harmon's 'The Classic Hundred Poems' is a fine example--but Wu's compilation sits more appropriately beside the Norton 2A or Mellor and Matlak's 'British Literature: 1780-1830.' Wu's text is a comprehensive and teachable option among these, but none will meet everyone's demands; that is a necessary condition of anthologizing.
Rating: 
Summary: Not good way to read literature.
Review: Although recognising that this is an anthology, and not (as a previous reviewer seemed to want) a critical or biographical account, I found some problems with it. How does Duncan Wu decide how to choose the best, most representative poems and works of these writers? For me there is simply too much variety in this volume. It ranges from poems to philosophical works to diary excerpts in very short space. The introduction is full of vague and largely useless generalisations: 'Women of the romantic period, like those of any other, had a good deal to say about experiences peculiar to their social and political situation'. Why does this need to be stated? It's a bit like saying, 'right we better get the feminist credentials in', even if it's not appropriate. Why social and political in particular? Why not all other kinds of experience? It's just that lazy literary critics use these terms rather than admit that they don't know what to say. I don't feel that this is a good way to teach literature. It is a bit like saying 'we've condensed it all down for you and this is all you need to know'. It is impossible for a reader to read 6 pages of Burke for example and then start applying his ideas in essays as if they knew exactly what he was talking about. Recommended: 'Wordsworth: The Major Works' ed. Stephen Gill.
Rating:
Summary: Not good way to read literature.
Review: Although recognising that this is an anthology, and not (as a previous reviewer seemed to want) a critical or biographical account, I found some problems with it. How does Duncan Wu decide how to choose the best, most representative poems and works of these writers? For me there is simply too much variety in this volume. It ranges from poems to philosophical works to diary excerpts in very short space. The introduction is full of vague and largely useless generalisations: 'Women of the romantic period, like those of any other, had a good deal to say about experiences peculiar to their social and political situation'. Why does this need to be stated? It's a bit like saying, 'right we better get the feminist credentials in', even if it's not appropriate. Why social and political in particular? Why not all other kinds of experience? It's just that lazy literary critics use these terms rather than admit that they don't know what to say. I don't feel that this is a good way to teach literature. It is a bit like saying 'we've condensed it all down for you and this is all you need to know'. It is impossible for a reader to read 6 pages of Burke for example and then start applying his ideas in essays as if they knew exactly what he was talking about. Recommended: 'Wordsworth: The Major Works' ed. Stephen Gill.
Rating:
Summary: Another one of these "anthologies"
Review: Being certainly one of the most comprehensive and sensibly assembled collections of English lyric between 1790 and 1850, this book still disappointed me like so many other anthologies. At the end of the day, it is only a large collection of poems, nothing else. Okay, a short paragraph introduces every poet and there is the odd footnote and cross-reference (often stating obvious or unimportant things, while explanations are missing where they are really needed). But interpretations and comments is what makes an anthology really good. I could put some poems together in a book and publish it, especially if I would be a lecturer at Oxford, that's no big deal. If you want to see some really great anthologies, written by an author who shows real love and enthusiasm for his subject, look at Richard Holmes' books on S.T. Coleridge !
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