This is a comprehensive reference work on early English poetry anthologies - a bibliographical catalogue and an index of printed anthologies of English poetry to 1640.

Early English poetry anthologies are important because they reflect the poetic taste of their age. While early anthologies reflected the native English poetic tradition, later anthologies revealed more of a Continental influence. This comprehensive reference work on those anthologies is both a bibliographical catalog and an exhaustive first-line index of printed anthologies of English poetry to 1640. The anthology fills gaps that others have left, covering subjects in their entirety and providing easy access for student and scholar alike. The author not only provides an overview of English poetry, relating it to larger critical issues such as authorship, style, and the manuscript culture, he has also divided the text into two main parts, both keyed to Pollard and Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (STC) and the University Microfilms Index (UMI). The first part of Baue's work is a catalog of bibliographical descriptions of the first editions of the anthologies, including SRC and UMI numbers. The second part is a comprehensive index of all of the first lines of the poems in all of the anthologies, including STC numbers for easy location. A short-title checklist of anthologies and their subsequent editions, including STC and UMI numbers for handy reference, rounds out this text. A resource for students working with Renaissance lyric poetry and useful for scholars in tracking the development of literary tastes over a critical century.