The Oxford Book of Comic Verse

From limericks to social satire, The Oxford Book of Comic Verse offers a remarkable collection of outstanding light poetry. John Gross has brought together the finest writers in the history of the English languagefrom Chaucer and Skelton to Shakespeare and Swift, Lord Byron to Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson to John Updike, as well as witty song lyrics from such artists as Irving Berlin and Cole Porteroffering delightful examples of their comic verse. Drawing on many different types of verse, including epigrams, street ballads, advertising jingles, clerihew, music-hall lyrics, and the doubledactyl of the calypso, this highly entertaining collection offers an exceptionally wide range of comic pleasures. The poems are by turns subtle, down-to-earth, macabre, ingenious, acerbic, ribald, and cheerful. Written to amuse, they call forth laughter and delight in equal measure. Compiled by one of our finest critics and anthologists, this reissue boasts a stylish new design and a fresh contemporary feel.

John Gross is a writer and reviewer. He was editor of the Times Literary Supplement from 1974 to 1981, on the staff of the New York Times from 1983 to 1988, and theatre critic of the Sunday Telegraph from 1998 to 2005. His books include The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters (1969; new edn 1991), Shylock: A Legend and Its Legacy (1992), and a memoir A Double Thread (2002). He has edited the Oxford Books of Aphorisms (1983), Essays (1991), and Literary Anecdotes (2006), and The New Oxford Book of English Prose (1998). His most recent anthology is After Shakespeare (2002).

Available upon request