Th s study discusses the representation of class in poetry in English from Britain and Ireland between the fourteenth and twenty-first centuries, and the effect of class on the production, dissemination, and reception of that poetry. It looks at the factors which enable and obstruct the production of poetry, such as literacy, education, patronage, prejudice, print, and the various alleged revivals of poetry in Britain, and the relationship between class and poetic form. Whilst this is a survey that cannot be comprehensive, it offers a number of case-studies of poets and poems from each period considered.

Dr Sandie Byrne is Associate Professor in English Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford. She is the author of a number of works on poetry, including Tony Harrison: Loiner (1997); H., v.,& O: The Poetry of Tony Harrison (1999), and The Poetry of Ted Hughes (2014).