Widely regarded as one of England's most sensitive readers of poetry, Barbara Everett here examines the poetry of Donne, Milton, Marvell, Rochester, Pope, Keats, Browning, Eliot, Auden, and Philip Larkin. The implicit argument of these essays is designed to show the way each poet remains an individual—idiosyncratic, odd, rich—while interacting with the conditions of a particular historical context. To this difficult task Everett brings an extraordinary ability to read closely and an intimate knowledge of the period.