THIS volume tries valiantly to make sense of the huge outpouring of poetry between the French Revolution and the 1930s that has come to embody Romanticism.

In a departure from traditional anthologies, which present poems writer by writer, the editors, Jonathan and Jessica Wordsworth, have arranged this collection in 12 intriguing sections by theme and genre.

These draw attention to likeness and difference and encourage lesser-known writers and poems (particularly by women) to stand in dialogue with the towering figures of the age - Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth and Keats.

Alongside more traditional sections on Romantic Odes And Lyrics are those that challenge current ideas of Romanticism.

Poets And Relationships reveal writers off guard, placing Byron's verses to the half-sister who stood by him and the wife who rejected him beside the little-known Mary Norton's lovely family-poem Recollections.

The section on the Gothic And Surreal demonstrates how the fashion for horror extended beyond the novels of Mary Shelley and Anne Radcliffe to influence poets as diverse as Blake and Keats and the lesser-known Mary Robinson and Thomas Hood.

Romantic Comedy And Satire reminds us that although Byron was regarded as the satirical genius of his day, Blake, Keats and Wordsworth were all capable of comic masterpieces.

Fully annotated with an introduction and short biographies of every poet, the New Penguin Book Of Romantic Poetry will be invaluable to students and general readers alike.

Jonathan Wordsworth, a retired Professor of English Literature at Oxford, is descended from William Wordsworth's younger brother, Christopher.

Updated: 08:57 Wednesday, July 09, 2003