Rhyme and Reason :A Short History of British Poetry from the #1 bestselling author of The Etymologicon
Rhyme and Reason :A Short History of British Poetry from the #1 bestselling author of The Etymologicon
hardback
Published:
16 October, 2025
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Description
'Enchanting' Stephen Fry
'Unconventional, surprising and provocative from the first page' Times Literary Supplement
Did you know:
- Lord Byron sold more books in a day than Jane Austen did in her lifetime
- During the First World War there were more women poets published than soldier poets
- A kitchen-maid became one of the most popular poets of the 18th century
Some people worry that they don't appreciate poetry; but English poetry wasn't written to be appreciated, it was written to be enjoyed. For six centuries people have been reading poetry for enjoyment - for fun, romance, religion and entertainment - and this is a book about those people.
Rhyme & Reason takes you from a medieval accountant (called Chaucer) trying to entertain his lord, past a doomed love affair in the Tower of London, through adoring sonnets and notebooks filled with dirty poems, and into the heart of Byromania and the Victorian hearth, to help you understand why poetry has had such an enduring hold on the British psyche.
From the poems of housemaids to the rhymes of kings, it's the history of Britain through the poems that people read, recited and loved.
More Details
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| ISBN13 | 9781805465287 |
| ISBN10 | 1805465287 |
| Number Of Pages | 368 |
| Item Weight | 1000 g |
| Publisher / Reseller | Atlantic Books |
| Format | hardback |
| Edition | Main |
Media Reviews
An enchanting and highly readable achievement that reminds us that poetry was always for everyone, not just for academics, intellectuals and bohemians. Wonderfully done. * Stephen Fry *
At last! The poetry book that tells us why it's the greatest, most magical form of human expression
Makes poetry sexy. At last
I love poetry, and I love this book
Here is history that rhymes and scans and where each stanza has an unexpected twist and each image is more multilayered than it first appears; this is a glorious poetry/real life interface! * Ian McMillan *
Unconventional, surprising and provocative from the first page... I often found it very funny. * Times Literary Supplement *
GoodReads Reviews
Author's Bio
Born in London in 1977, Mark Forsyth (aka The Inky Fool) was given a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary as a christening present and has never looked back. His book The Etymologicon was a Sunday Times #1 bestseller and was followed by The Horologicon and The Elements of Eloquence. He has written A Christmas Cornucopia on the origins of Christmas traditions and A Short History of Drunkenness. He has also penned a specially commissioned introduction for the new edition of the Collins English Dictionary, and written a novel for children called A Riddle for a King. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in London with his dictionaries, and blogs at blog.inkyfool.com