The Faber Book of Modern Verse

📅 1936 ✏️ Michael Roberts; revised by Anne Ridler (1951), Donald Hall (1965), Peter Porter (1982) 📖 Faber & Faber 📚 4 editions: Roberts (1936), Ridler (1951), Hall (1965), Porter (1982)

ModernistBritish20th CenturyCanon-definingFaber & Faber

The Faber Book of Modern Verse (1936), edited by Michael Roberts, was the first anthology to canonize modernist poetry in Britain, championing T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, and their contemporaries for a general readership. It went through three subsequent editions — revised by Anne Ridler in 1951, Donald Hall in 1965, and Peter Porter in 1982 — each updating the modernist canon for a new generation.

Overview

First published by Faber & Faber in 1936, The Faber Book of Modern Verse was compiled by Michael Roberts, a poet, critic, and mathematics teacher who had previously edited New Signatures (1932) and New Country (1933) — influential early anthologies of the 1930s poets. Roberts's Faber anthology was a bolder and more consequential project: a comprehensive argument for modernist poetry as the vital tradition of the twentieth century, addressed not to a small coterie but to a wide literary public.

Scope and Contents

Roberts's 1936 edition featured T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Louis MacNeice, and other modernist and 1930s poets. The anthology's core argument was that the modernists were not an eccentric fringe but the legitimate successors of the English poetic tradition — an argument still controversial in 1936, when many common readers and critics still regarded Eliot and Pound as baffling or fraudulent. Roberts included substantial selections from each poet, allowing readers to form a real judgment of their work rather than encountering token pieces.

Editorial Approach and Later Editions

Roberts died in 1948, and Faber commissioned Anne Ridler to produce a revised edition in 1951. Ridler retained most of Roberts's original selections while adding younger poets who had emerged in the 1940s, including Dylan Thomas, George Barker, and David Gascoyne. The second major revision came in 1965, edited by American poet Donald Hall, who added poets from the 1950s and early 1960s — Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin, and others. Hall also expanded the American representation. The final revision, edited by Peter Porter in 1982, brought the anthology up to the contemporary period with poets such as Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, and Paul Muldoon. Each edition thus functioned as a time capsule of what the modernist canon looked like at that moment.

Historical Significance

The Faber Book of Modern Verse was the first major anthology to treat modernist poetry not as an experimental curiosity but as the mainstream of twentieth-century English poetry — and to present it through the prestige lens of Faber & Faber, Eliot's own publisher. Its four editions across nearly fifty years constitute a running record of how the modernist canon expanded, contracted, and evolved.

Criticism

The anthology was criticised, especially in its later editions, for its persistent emphasis on white male poets at the expense of women and minority voices. While the 1965 Hall edition began to address this gap slightly, the Porter edition in 1982 still lagged behind the diversity of contemporary poetry publishing. The anthology also faced the structural challenge of any multi-edition collection: each revision had to honour Roberts's original vision while responding to a changed literary landscape, producing a series of compromises that satisfied no one entirely.

Related Anthologies

The New American Poetry, Palgrave's Golden Treasury, The New Poetry

Frequently Asked Questions

What is The Faber Book of Modern Verse?

The Faber Book of Modern Verse (1936), edited by Michael Roberts and published by Faber & Faber, was the first anthology to present modernist poetry as the mainstream of twentieth-century English verse. It featured Eliot, Pound, Auden, and their contemporaries and went through four editions across nearly fifty years.

Who revised The Faber Book of Modern Verse after Michael Roberts?

Anne Ridler revised it in 1951, adding 1940s poets including Dylan Thomas. Donald Hall produced a major second revision in 1965, adding poets from the 1950s–60s. Peter Porter edited the final revision in 1982, extending coverage into the contemporary period.

Why is The Faber Book of Modern Verse historically important?

It was the first major anthology to argue — and make commercially and critically credible — that modernist poetry (Eliot, Pound, Auden) was not a marginal experiment but the vital tradition of twentieth-century English poetry, published by the prestige house of Faber & Faber.

Last updated: 2026-07-01