Francis Turner Palgrave was born in 1824 and educated at Charterhouse and Oxford University. After ten years in the education department of the civil service, he was appointed professor of poetry at Oxford University. He published three volumes of his own poetry, but is best remembered for compiling The Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics, which was first published in 1861. He died in 1897.

The Golden Treasury is one of the most loved anthologies of English poetry ever published. The book was meticulously compiled by poet and scholar Francis Turner Palgrave, in collaboration with Alfred Tennyson, who was then poet laureate.

It is arranged chronologically in four books which each celebrate a different era in the evolution of English poetry, from Elizabethan to the 19th century. All the greats are here, including Shakespeare and Milton, Marvell and Pope, Wordsworth and Keats. First published in 1861, it became the standard anthology for over 100 years.

This Macmillan Collector’s Library edition includes a foreword by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, and is published to mark Macmillan’s 175th anniversary.