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
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
including 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
including 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
including 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
including 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
including 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
including 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
including 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
including 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
including 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
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
