The Oxford Book of Children's Verse

Fülszöveg

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THE OXFORD BOOK OF CHILDREN'S VERSE
Chosen and Edited by lona and Peter Opie
A treasury of delight for all ages, The Oxford Book of Children's Verse brings together British and American classics in children's poetry spanning five hundred years. Its 332 entries were chosen, in the words of the editors, as "verses that have been written for children, or written with children prominently in mind, which either were cherished in their own day, or have stood the test of time." Arranged chronologically, they represent some of the finest —and often funniest—poets of each age. From Chaucer to Ogden Nash, the collection hosts the art of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Charles and Mary Lamb, Keats, Browning, Lear, Tennyson, "Lewis Carroll," Kipling, de la Mare, Milne, T. S. Eliot, and many others—both renowned and anonymous.
Since all verse is intimately related to the period in which it is written, the Opies' chronological format provides a fascinating profile of poetic... Tovább

Fülszöveg

I ¦ ¦ i
l' I
THE OXFORD BOOK OF CHILDREN'S VERSE
Chosen and Edited by lona and Peter Opie
A treasury of delight for all ages, The Oxford Book of Children's Verse brings together British and American classics in children's poetry spanning five hundred years. Its 332 entries were chosen, in the words of the editors, as "verses that have been written for children, or written with children prominently in mind, which either were cherished in their own day, or have stood the test of time." Arranged chronologically, they represent some of the finest —and often funniest—poets of each age. From Chaucer to Ogden Nash, the collection hosts the art of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Charles and Mary Lamb, Keats, Browning, Lear, Tennyson, "Lewis Carroll," Kipling, de la Mare, Milne, T. S. Eliot, and many others—both renowned and anonymous.
Since all verse is intimately related to the period in which it is written, the Opies' chronological format provides a fascinating profile of poetic trends and changing social values. In poems written earlier than 1740, the child is addressed as but a small, would-be adult clearly in need of edifying measures. The disarmingly candid counsel of medieval bards—heard in "Manners at Table when away from Home"—reveals a socially practical view of life. The admonitory verses of the Elizabethans and Puritans emphasize, on the other hand, moral and religious obligations, as summed up in Herrick's couplet: "God to be First Served."
The child's own world first emerges in the middle of the eighteenth century in poems featuring pets, puppet shows, and
light-hearted "morals" like "The Bald Cavalier." And during this humanistic period Blake, "piping songs of pleasant glee," directs his art to an innocence in all mankind. In the following two centuries, an abundance of children's verse offers a remarkable variety of mood and mirth. Indeed, the full selection from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries bursts exuberantly with nonsense verse, nursery rhymes, limericks, and poetic fantasies—leading the reader to recapture or discover what is by now the fond and joyful heritage of countless generations.
The volume combines the highest taste and scholarship with a beautiful simplicity of presentation. Each poem has been traced back to its first printing or earliest extant record, but the pithy notes concerning authors, sources, and creative circumstances are provided unobtrusively at the end of the book. Spelling and punctuation have also been modernized, so that the anthology offers immediate browsing pleasure, while satisfying deeper literary curiosity. Six period line cuts add to its appeal.
lONA AND PETER OPIE live in Hampshire, England, where their library of children's literature is one of the most extensive of its kind.
Other books by lona and Peter Opie children's games in street and
playground the lore and language of
schoolchildren the oxford dictionary of
nursery rhymes the oxford nursery rhyme book
The painting depicted on the jacket is from Romney's portrait of the Gower family, and it is reproduced here by courtesy of Messrs. Christie, Manson and Woods, Ltd., London. Vissza