A History of English Versification

About this book

This work is a scholarly handbook on the history and criticism of English poetry, written by Jakob Schipper, a professor of English philology at the University of Vienna. The opening pages explain that the text contains typographical features that cannot be fully reproduced here and that an HTML version offers a more faithful rendering. Schipper’s preface recounts the long‑standing demand for an English edition of his earlier German treatise, notes the delays caused by the death of Professor York Powell, and outlines how the present volume closely follows the German original while expanding the first chapters and adding attention to a few modern English poets. The book is organized into two large parts, one on native metre and stanza forms, the other on foreign influences, and provides a systematic catalogue of verse types, complete with references to the larger German work for deeper study.

The voice is that of an early‑20th‑century academic, formal and meticulous, with frequent acknowledgments of collaborators such as Henry Bradley and James Morison. Its dense, clause‑rich prose reflects the era’s philological scholarship, making it most rewarding for students of English literature, poets interested in the mechanics of meter, and historians of literary criticism who appreciate a comprehensive, reference‑style treatment of English versification.