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Anthologizing Modernism: New Verse Anthologies, 1913-53, Warren Scott Cheney

Dissertations

The history of the anthology form goes back thousands of years to what is often called the Greek Anthology--a modern term and not the title of one ancient work. Though there are fragments of earlier collections, Meleager of Gadara's Stephanos (or Garland) is the first known poetry anthology and dates to approximately 100 BC. Anthologies of English poetry begin in 1557 with Richard Tottel's Songes and Sonnettes, commonly known as "Totell's Miscellany." It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century, however, that single-volume poetry anthologies became popular. This development changed the methods editors used and the constraints they …