The Greatest Poetry Collections of All Time
This list considers collections or anthologies of poems. Mostly we are looking at books by individual poets, though a few collections of historical or literary significance featuring multiple artists have also been included.
Wherever possible we are highlighting books of poetry produced by the poets during their writing careers, though in some cases we have had to resort to retrospectively published selected or collected works.
Latest revision: March 15, 2024
The 111 greatest poetry collections
In chronological order
BCE
c.1000–600
Classic of Poetry
Various authors,,
China,
poetry collection
c.610–580
Sappho's Poems
Sappho,
Greece,
poetry collection
c.520–440
Epinician Odes
Pindar,
Greece,
poetry collection
c.475
Olympian
Pindar,
Greece,
poetry collection
c.270
Epigrams
Asclepiades of Samos,
Greece,
poetry collection
Idylls
Theocritus,
Greece,
poetry collection
c.41–37
Eclogues
Virgil,
Rome,
poetry collection
35–30
Odes
Horace,
Rome,
poetry collection
30–26
Marathus Cycle
Tibullus,
Rome,
poetry collection
29–16
Elegies
Sextus Propertius,
Rome,
poetry collection
23–13
Odes
Horace,
Rome,
poetry collection
CE
93–96
Silvae
Statius,
Rome,
poetry collection
86–103
Epigrams
Martial,
Rome,
poetry collection
c.100–127
Satires
Juvenal,
Rome,
poetry collection
c.450–500
The Three Satakas
Bhartṛhari,
India,
poetry collection
c.759
Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro and others,
Japan,
poetry collection
c.1180
Lais of Marie de France
Marie de France,
England,
poetry collection
1257
The Orchard
Saadi Shirazi,
Persia,
poetry collection
1294
The New Life
Alighieri Dante,
Italy,
prose and poetry collection
c.1100
Rubaiyat
Omar Khayyám,
Persia,
poetry collection
1327–1368
Il Canzoniere
Francesco Petrarch,
Italy,
poetry collection
c.1387–1400
The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer,
England,
prose and poetry collection
1494
Ship of Fools
Sebastian Brant,
Germany,
poetry collection
c.1590–1591
Elegies
John Donne,
England,
poetry collection
Satires
John Donne,
England,
poetry collection
1609
England,
poetry collection
Includes Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?; When, in Disgrace with Fortune and Men's Eyes; and others
1648
Hesperides
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
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
George Herbert,
England,
poetry collection
1763
Three Hundred Tang Poems
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
Ignacy Krasicki,
Poland,
poetry collection
1786–1793
Poems, Chiefly in Scottish Dialect
Robert Burns,
Scotland,
poetry collection
1789–1794
Songs of Innocence and Experience
William Blake,
England,
poetry collection
1797–1806
Hymns and Fragments
Friedrich Hölderlin,
Germany,
poetry collection
1798–1800
Lyrical Ballads
William Wordsworth,
England,
poetry collection
1807
Poems, in Two Volumes
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
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
Germany,
poetry collection
1827
Book of Songs
Heinrich Heine,
Germany,
poetry collection
1835
Canti
Giacomo Leopardi,
Italy,
poetry collection
1842
The Nursery Rhymes of England
James Orchard Halliwell,
England,
poetry collection
Lays of Ancient Rome
Thomas Babington Macauley,
England,
poetry collection
1844
Poems
Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
England,
poetry collection
1845
The Raven and Other Poems
Edgar Allan Poe,
United States,
poetry collection
1846–1863
The Book of Nonsense
Edward Lear,
England,
poetry collection
1850
Sonnets From the Portuguese
Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
England,
poetry collection
1852
Enamels and Cameos
Théophile Gautier,
France,
poetry collection
1852
Enamels and Cameos
Théophile Gautier,
France,
poetry collection
1855
Men and Women
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
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
Victor Hugo,
France,
poetry collection
1859–1885
Idylls of the King
Alfred Lord Tennyson,
England,
poetry collection
1869
Collected Poems
Matthew Arnold,
United States,
poetry collection
1862
Goblin Market and Other Poems
Christina Rossetti,
England,
poetry collection
1871
Rimas
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer,
Spain,
poetry collection
1882
Ismaelillo
José Marti,
Cuba,
poetry collection
1905
Songs of Life and Hope
Rubén Darío,
Nicaragua,
poetry collection
1907
Songs of a Sourdough
Robert Service,
Canada,
poetry collection
1912
Song Offerings
Rabindranath Tagore,
Bengal,
poetry collection
Poetical Works
Robert Bridges,
England,
poetry collection
Campos de Castilla
Antonio Machado,
Spain,
poetry collection
1913
Alcohols
Guillaume Apollinaire,
France,
poetry collection
1914
North of Boston
Robert Frost,
United States,
poetry collection
Includes Mending Wall, The Death of the Hired Man, After Apple-Picking, and others
1915
Spoon River Anthology
Edgar Lee Masters,
Rome,
poetry collection
1915–1962
The Cantos
Ezra Pound,
United States,
poetry collection
1916
Mountain Interval
Robert Frost,
United States,
poetry collection
Includes The Road Not Taken, Birches, Out, Out—, and others
Chicago Poems
Carl Sandburg,
United States,
poetry collection
1917
Prufrock and Other Observations
T.S. Eliot,
England,
poetry collection
Includes The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Preludes, Rhapsody on a Windy Night, and others
1918
Poems
Gerard Manley Hopkins,
England,
poetry collection
1920
Poems
Wilfred Owen,
England,
poetry collection
1923
Duino Elegies
Ranier Maria Rilke,
Germany,
poetry collection
Tulips and Chimneys
e.e. cummings,
United States,
poetry collection
New Hampshire
Robert Frost,
United States,
poetry collection
The Prophet
Kahlil Gibran,
United States,
poetry collection
1925
Residence on Earth and Other Poems
Pablo Neruda,
Chile,
poetry collection
1928
The Tower
W.B. Yeats,
Ireland,
poetry collection
Gypsy Ballads
Federico García Lorca,
Spain,
poetry collection
1933
Collected Poems
W.B. Yeats,
Ireland,
poetry collection
1938
Harvesting
Gabriela Mistral,
Chile,
poetry collection
1940
Another Time
W.H. Auden,
England,
poetry collection
Poet in New York
Federico García Lorca,
Spain,
poetry collection
1944–1946
Trilogy
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle),
United States,
poetry collection
1946
Paroles
Jacques Prévert,
France,
poetry collection
1951
Montage of a Dream Deferred
Langston Hughes,
United States,
poetry collection
1955
The Complete Poems
Emily Dickinson,
United States,
poetry collection
1956
Howl and Other Poems
Allen Ginsberg,
United States,
poetry collection
1958
A Coney Island of the Mind
Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
United States,
poetry collection
1959
Lie Studies
Robert Lowell,
United States,
poetry collection
1961
Kaddish and Other Poems
Allen Ginsberg,
United States,
poetry collection
1963
Selected Poems
Octavio Paz,
Mexico,
poetry collection
Requiem
Anna Akhmatova,
Russia,
poetry collection
1965
Ariel
Sylvia Plath,
United States,
poetry collection
1970
Crow
Ted Hughes,
England,
poetry collection
The Poetry of Lois Cernuda
Luis Cernuda,
Spain,
poetry collection
Collected Poems
Frank O'Hara,
United States,
poetry collection
1972
England,
poetry collection
1973
Diving Into the Wreck
Adrienne Rich,
United States,
poetry collection
1975
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
John Ashbery,
United States,
poetry collection
1977
A Part of Speech
Joseph Brodsky,
Russia,
poetry collection
1981
Emplumada
Lorna Dee Cervantes,
United States,
poetry collection
1994
The Complete Collected Poems
Maya Angelou,
United States,
poetry collection
1998
Open Ground: Poems 1966–1996
Seamus Heaney,
Ireland,
poetry collection
2000
I Ask the Impossible
Ana Castillo,
United States,
poetry collection
Selected Prose and Poems
Paul Celan,
Romania,
prose and poetry collection
2002
Dart
Alice Oswald,
England,
poetry collection
2004
New and Collected Poems
Czesław Miłosz,
Poland,
poetry collection
2005
Rapture
Carol Ann Duffy,
England,
poetry collection
2011
Family Values
Wendy Cope,
England,
poetry collection
