Excerpt from The Cambridge Book of Poetry and Song: Selected From English and American Authors

Though text-books of every variety abound, and many per sons assert the old to be better than the new, yet every year sees no inconsiderable number added to their list. It is folly to suppose that any one prepares a work merely for the sake of doing it, and careful examination proves that every successor in a given field has some superiority of plan, comprehensiveness, detail, or material to recommend it. Something it may lack that others have, but it also has something that others lack. So it is with compilations of poetry. Every one is found faulty somewhere, by somebody, nor can it be imagined possible, with the varied tastes of men, that the work of one should be so all embracing as to leave no intelligent reader disappointed. The compiler of this volume has not pretended to make what she has never found, -a perfect compilation, - and will be gratified if this prove so well done as to save it from the charge of being a supernumerary. Whatever its defects, it still carries out, in the main, her aim in undertaking it, which was, First. - To represent the genius of woman as fairly as that of man.

Second - To the extent of the compiler's power, to give those 'poets their just dues who have hitherto not had them.

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