The 111 Greatest Poetry Collections
This list considers collections or anthologies of poems. Mostly this comprises books by individual poets, though a few collections of historical or literary significance featuring multiple writers have also been included.
Wherever possible books of poetry produced by the poets during their writing careers are highlighted, though in some cases we have had to resort to posthumously published selected or collected works.
Latest revision: March 15, 2024
BCE
c.1000–600
Classic of Poetry
by various authors, China
Poetry anthology, also known as Book of Songs or Book of Odes
c.610–580
Sappho's Poems
by Sappho, Greece
Poetry collection, also known as Fragments of Sappho
c.520–440
Epinician Odes
by Pindar, Greece
Poetry collection
c.475
Olympian
by Pindar, Greece
Poetry collection
c.270
Epigrams
by Asclepiades of Samos, Greece
Poetry collection
Idylls
by Theocritus, Greece
Poetry collection
c.41–37
Eclogues
by Virgil, Rome
Poetry collection, also known as Bucolics
35–30
Odes
by Horace, Rome
Poetry collection
30–26
Marathus Cycle
by Tibullus, Rome
Poetry collection
29–16
Elegies
by Sextus Propertius, Rome
Poetry collection
23–13
Odes
by Horace, Rome
Poetry collection
CE
93–96
Silvae
by Statius, Rome
Poetry collection
86–103
Epigrams
by Martial, Rome
Poetry collection
c.100–127
Satires
by Juvenal, Rome
Poetry collection
c.450–500
The Three Satakas
by Bhartṛhari, India
Poetry collection, also known as The Three Hundred Poems of Moral Values
c.759
Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves
by various authors, Japan
Poetry anthology, also known as Anthology of a Myriad Leaves, originally Man'yōshū
c.1180
Lais of Marie de France
by Marie de France, England
Poetry collection
1257
The Orchard
by Saadi Shirazi, Persia
Poetry collection, originally Bustan
1294
The New Life
by Alighieri Dante, Italy
Prose and poetry collection
c.1100
Rubaiyat
by Omar Khayyám, Persia
Poetry collection
1327–1368
Il Canzoniere
by Francesco Petrarch, Italy
Poetry collection, also known as Rerum vulgarium fragmenta or Le Rime Sparse
c.1387–1400
The Canterbury Tales
by Geoffrey Chaucer, England
Prose and poetry collection
1494
Ship of Fools
by Sebastian Brant, Germany
Poetry collection, originally Das Narrenschiff
c.1590–1591
Elegies
by John Donne, England
Poetry collection
Satires
by John Donne, England
Poetry collection
1609
Sonnets
by William Shakespeare, England
Poetry collection includes "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?", "When, in Disgrace with Fortune and Men's Eyes", and others.
Shakespeare's sonnets have been dissected and speculated upon for profound and hidden meanings for years, but I think the best way into them for a novice is to consider them as Shakespeare having good fun—entertaining himself.... Critique • Quotes • Buy
1648
Hesperides
by Robert Herrick, England
Poetry collection includes To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time; Upon Julia's Clothes; and others
1668–1694
La Fontaine's Fables
by Jean de La Fontaine, France
Poetry collection includes The Fox and the Crow, The Tortoise and the Hare, The Ant and the Grasshopper, and others
1733
The Temple
by George Herbert, England
Poetry collection
1763
Three Hundred Tang Poems
by Du Fu, Li Bai and others, China
Poetry collection
1765
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry
ed. Thomas Percy, England
Poetry collection
1779
Fables and Parables
by Ignacy Krasicki, Poland
Poetry collection
1789–1794
Songs of Innocence and Experience
by William Blake, England
Poetry collection
1797–1806
Hymns and Fragments
by Friedrich Hölderlin, Germany
Poetry collection
1798–1800
Lyrical Ballads
by William Wordsworth, England
Poetry collection
1807
Poems, in Two Volumes
by William Wordsworth, England
Poetry collection includes I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud; My Heart Leaps Up; London, 1802; The World Is Too Much With Us; and others
1812
Poems
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany
Poetry collection
1827
Book of Songs
by Heinrich Heine, Germany
Poetry collection
1835
Canti
by Giacomo Leopardi, Italy
Poetry collection
1842
The Nursery Rhymes of England
by James Orchard Halliwell, England
Poetry collection
Lays of Ancient Rome
by Thomas Babington Macauley, England
Poetry collection
1844
Poems
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, England
Poetry collection, also known as A Drama of Exile, and other Poems
1845
The Raven and Other Poems
by Edgar Allan Poe, United States
Poetry collection
1846–1863
The Book of Nonsense
by Edward Lear, England
Poetry collection
1850
Sonnets From the Portuguese
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, England
Poetry collection
1852
Enamels and Cameos
by Théophile Gautier, France
Poetry collection
1852
Enamels and Cameos
by Théophile Gautier, France
Poetry collection
1855
Men and Women
by Robert Browning, England
Poetry collection includes Love Among the Ruins, Evelyn Hope, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, Andrea del Sarto, and others
1855–1892
Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman, United States
Poetry collection includes Song of Myself, the Sleepers, I Sing the Body Electric, There Was a Child Went Forth, and others
1859–1883
The Legend of the Ages
by Victor Hugo, France
Poetry collection
1859–1885
Idylls of the King
by Alfred Lord Tennyson, England
Poetry collection
1869
Collected Poems
by Matthew Arnold, United States
Poetry collection
1862
Goblin Market and Other Poems
by Christina Rossetti, England
Poetry collection
1871
Rimas
by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Spain
Poetry collection
1882
Ismaelillo
by José Marti, Cuba
Poetry collection
1896
A Shropshire Lad
by A.E. Housman, England
1905
Songs of Life and Hope
by Rubén Darío, Nicaragua
Poetry collection
1907
Songs of a Sourdough
by Robert Service, Canada
Poetry collection
1912
Song Offerings
by Rabindranath Tagore, Bengal
Poetry collection
Poetical Works
by Robert Bridges, England
Poetry collection
Campos de Castilla
by Antonio Machado, Spain
Poetry collection
1913
Alcohols
by Guillaume Apollinaire, France
Poetry collection
1914
North of Boston
by Robert Frost, United States
Poetry collection includes Mending Wall, The Death of the Hired Man, After Apple-Picking, and others
1915
Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters, Rome
Poetry collection
1915–1962
The Cantos
by Ezra Pound, United States
Poetry collection
1916
Mountain Interval
by Robert Frost, United States
Poetry collection includes The Road Not Taken, Birches, Out, Out—, and others
Chicago Poems
by Carl Sandburg, United States
Poetry collection
1917
Prufrock and Other Observations
by T.S. Eliot, England
Poetry collection includes The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Preludes, Rhapsody on a Windy Night, and others
1918
Poems
by Gerard Manley Hopkins, England
Poetry collection
1920
Poems
by Wilfred Owen, England
Poetry collection
1923
Duino Elegies
by Ranier Maria Rilke, Germany
Poetry collection
Tulips and Chimneys
by e.e. cummings, United States
Poetry collection
New Hampshire
by Robert Frost, United States
Poetry collection
The Prophet
by Kahlil Gibran, United States
Poetry collection
1925
Residence on Earth and Other Poems
by Pablo Neruda, Chile
Poetry collection
1928
The Tower
by W.B. Yeats, Ireland
Poetry collection
Gypsy Ballads
by Federico García Lorca, Spain
Poetry collection
1933
Collected Poems
by W.B. Yeats, Ireland
Poetry collection
1938
Harvesting
by Gabriela Mistral, Chile
Poetry collection
1940
Another Time
by W.H. Auden, England
Poetry collection
Poet in New York
by Federico García Lorca, Spain
Poetry collection
1944–1946
Trilogy
by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), United States
Poetry collection
1946
Paroles
by Jacques Prévert, France
Poetry collection
1951
Montage of a Dream Deferred
by Langston Hughes, United States
Poetry collection
1955
The Complete Poems
by Emily Dickinson, United States
Poetry collection
1956
Howl and Other Poems
by Allen Ginsberg, United States
Poetry collection
1958
A Coney Island of the Mind
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, United States
Poetry collection
1959
Lie Studies
by Robert Lowell, United States
Poetry collection
1961
Kaddish and Other Poems
by Allen Ginsberg, United States
Poetry collection
1963
Selected Poems
by Octavio Paz, Mexico
Poetry collection
Requiem
by Anna Akhmatova, Russia
Poetry collection
1965
Ariel
by Sylvia Plath, United States
Poetry collection
1970
Crow
by Ted Hughes, England
Poetry collection
The Poetry of Lois Cernuda
by Luis Cernuda, Spain
Poetry collection
Collected Poems
by Frank O'Hara, United States
Poetry collection
1973
Diving Into the Wreck
by Adrienne Rich, United States
Poetry collection
1975
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
by John Ashbery, United States
Poetry collection
1977
A Part of Speech
by Joseph Brodsky, Russia
Poetry collection
1981
Emplumada
by Lorna Dee Cervantes, United States
Poetry collection
1994
The Complete Collected Poems
by Maya Angelou, United States
Poetry collection
1998
Open Ground: Poems 1966–1996
by Seamus Heaney, Ireland
Poetry collection
2000
I Ask the Impossible
by Ana Castillo, United States
Poetry collection
Selected Prose and Poems
by Paul Celan, Romania
Prose and poetry collection
2002
Dart
by Alice Oswald, England
Poetry collection
2004
New and Collected Poems
by Czesław Miłosz, Poland
Poetry collection
2005
Rapture
by Carol Ann Duffy, England
Poetry collection
2011
Family Values
by Wendy Cope, England
Poetry collection
