William Heinemann (London, UK)
Series dates: 1951-1996
Size: 5″ x 7.5″
Barnes & Noble (New York, US)
Series dates: 1963-1981 (distributed some if not all titles prior to 1963)
Size: 5″ x 7.5″
Heinemanns’ The Poetry Bookshelf, edited by James Reeves, was a post WW2 series, which published 42 titles between 1951 and 1996. The titles were distributed by and/or published by Barnes and Noble in the US. It is possible that most of the titles before 1963 were distributed by Barnes & Noble, probably with a sticker affixed to the dust jacket (as with the copy below). After 1963, most of the titles in the series seem to include the Barnes & Noble imprint.
Jackets are common to the series for the first few decades, following the design of Selected Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelly shown below. This title was first published in 1960. The series name is not included on the jacket spine, front or front jacket flap. The front jacket flap describes the book.
The back of the jacket repeats the title and author. The rear jacket flap lists titles in the series as of 1960 with editors, if the editor was other than Reeves. A sticker on the base of the jacket indicates this title was distributed in the US by Barnes & Noble. The Barnes & Noble imprint is not in the book itself, which was printed in the UK.
A complete list of titles in the series with, as far as I can determine, the initial year of publication:
THE POETRY BOOKSHELF
General Editor: JAMES REEVES
Selected Poems of D.H. Lawrence, edited by James Reeves (1951)
Selected Poems of John Donne, edited by James Reeves (1952)
Selected Poems of John Clare, edited by James Reeves (1952)
Selected Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, edited by James Reeves (1953)
Selected Poems of Robert Browning, edited by James Reeves (1955)
English and Scottish Ballads, edited by Robert Graves (1956)
Selected Poems of William Blake, edited by F.W. Bateson (1957)
The Modern Poets’ World, edited by James Reeves (1957)
Selected Poems of William Wordsworth, edited by Roger Sharrock (1958)
The Late Augustans, edited by Donald Davie (1958)
Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by James Reeves (1959)
Selected Poems of S.T. Coleridge, edited by James Reeves (1959)
Selected Poems of Robert Burns, edited by G.S. Fraser (1960)
Selected Poems of P.B. Shelley, edited by John Holloway (1960)
Selected Poems of Tennyson, edited by Edmund Blunden (1960)
Eight Metaphysical Poets, edited by Jack Dalglish (1961)
*Shakespeare’s Sonnets, edited by Martin Seymour-Smith (1963)
*Jonson and the Cavaliers, Maurice Hussey (1964)
*Seven Victorian Poets edited by David Wright (1964)
*Selected Poems of Byron, edited by Robin Skelton (1964)
Selected Poems of John Dryden, edited by Roger Sharrock (1964)
*Selected Poems of Alexander Pope, edited by John Heath-Stubbs (1964)
*Selected Poems and Letters of Keats, edited by Robert Gittings (1966)
*Poetry of the Restoration, Vivian de Sola Pinto (1966)
*Selected Poems of Jonathan Swift, edited by James Reeves (1967)
*Late Medieval Scots Poetry, Tom Scott (1967)
*A New Canon of English Poetry, James Reeves (1967)
*Poems of Andrew Marvell, edited by James Reeves & Martin Seymour-Smith (1969)
*English Poetry, 1400-1580, William Tydeman (1970)
*Lyric and Allegory, Geoffrey Chaucer, edited by James Reeves (1970)
*Shorter Poems of John Milton, edited by Denis H. Burden (1970)
*Selected Poems or George Herbert, edited by Gareth Reeves (1971)
*Selected Poems and Prose of Matthew Arnold, edited by Denys Thompson (1971)
*Longer Elizabethan Poems, edited by Martin Seymour-Smith (1972)
*The Early Augustans, Francis Venables (1972)
*Complete English Poems, Thomas Gray (1973)
Augustan Lyric, Donald Davie (1974)
*Five Late Romantic Poets, James Reeves (1974)
*Selected Poems, Walter Whitman (1976)
*Selected poems of Thomas Hardy, edited by James Reeves (1980)
The Critical Sense, James Reeves (1987)
Lyrical Ballads: Wordsworth & Coleridge, edited by Carole Coates (1996)
*Published in the US under the imprint Barnes & Noble. Earlier copies may have been distributed by Barnes & Noble in the US, but with the Heinemann imprint.
The binding here is dark blue with gold typography on the spine.
The half-title page:
A list of titles in the series follows the half-title page.
A portrait of Shelley faces the title page.
The copyright page includes the birth and death years of Shelley, copyright of the introduction and year of first publication (1960). “Printed by Morrison and Gibb Ltd., London and Edinburgh.”
