Hard Labour 
Frank Kermode
- The Poems of Andrew Marvell edited by Nigel Smith
The task of keeping us interested in the canonical poets seems now to have fallen mainly to the Longman Annotated English Poets series. But who are we? Every time another volume is added somebody has to decide who we are, how many we are, and how much annotation and prefatory material we’ll want in addition to a reliable text. Given that nobody really knows the market for the canonical poets, or how many people are willing to work with a full-scale edition, these cannot be easy decisions. Perhaps it is in accordance with them that the quantity of annotation, even within this series, varies from one volume to another.
Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article is also available for purchase online: buy this article.
Frank Kermode’s books include The Sense of an Ending and The Uses of Error.
Other articles by this contributor:
Nutmegged · The War against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 by Martin Amis.
No Tricks · Raymond Carver
Nothing for Ever and Ever · Housman’s Pleasures
Writing about Shakespeare · Frank Kermode has his say
Retripotent · B. S. Johnson
Complicated Detours · Darwin’s Worms by Adam Phillips
First Pitch · Marianne Moore
‘Disgusting’ · Frank Kermode remembers William Empson
print layout
tell a friend