Philip Larkin''s Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse provoked controversy and dispute on first publication in 1973. Warmly welcomed by fellow poets John Betjeman and W.H. Auden, it was also considered a quirky and idiosyncratic collection by some critics. Today it is recognized as a fine and wide-ranging selection of modern verse, valuable not least because it reflects the tastes of one of the best, and best-loved, English poets of the twentiethcentury. As the successor to W.B. Yeats''s Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892-1935, this anthology made a radical re-assessment of the century''s achievement in poetry; it represented verse that was `lighter in tone, more understated, more casual, more conversational, more colloquial, in a way more democratic and more domestic than it was for Yeats''. It also introduced many little-known poets whose names have not entered the canon, and whose contributions add colour and depth to the anthology. AsPhilip Larkin writes in his Preface, in
