The Golden Treasury by Francis T. Palgrave (Hardcover)

“The Golden Treasury” is a poetry anthology edited by Francis Turner Palgrave and first published in 1861. Palgrave was a poet, critic, and professor of poetry at the University of Oxford. He assembled the anthology as a guide to the best poetry in the English language, and it quickly became one of the most influential and widely read collections of English poetry.

The anthology includes poems from a range of poets, including William Shakespeare, John Donne, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, among others. Palgrave arranged the poems thematically, rather than chronologically or by author, in order to create a cohesive and unified collection.

“The Golden Treasury” was celebrated for its selection of classic English poems, and it was widely used as a textbook in schools and universities. It was also admired for its emphasis on the beauty and musicality of poetry, and it played a significant role in shaping popular conceptions of what constituted “good” poetry.

In addition to the original edition, Palgrave released several updated versions of “The Golden Treasury” during his lifetime, and the anthology has continued to be republished and revised by subsequent editors. Today, it remains a beloved and influential collection of English poetry.