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Rhyme and Reason

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Rhyme and Reason

By: Mark Forsyth
Narrated by: Simon Shepherd
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Some people worry that they don't appreciate poetry; but English poetry wasn't written to be appreciated it was written to be enjoyed. For six centuries people have been reading poetry for enjoyment - for fun, for romance, for religion and for entertainment - and this is a book about those people.


What was it like to be sent a Tudor love sonnet? And how did you reply? What did people think of Wordsworth or Chaucer before they were put on pedestals? What was it like to read poetry back in the days when you didn't have to write an essay on it afterwards?

Rhyme and Reason takes you from a medieval accountant (called Chaucer) trying to entertain his lord, past a doomed love affair in the Tower of London, through adoring sonnets and notebooks filled with dirty poems, through Byromania and the Victorian hearth, understanding why people simply enjoyed poetry. From the poems of housemaids to the rhymes of kings it's the history of Britain through the poems that people read, recited and loved.©2025 Mark Forsyth (P)2025 W.F. Howes Ltd. Editors Select Europe European Great Britain Literary History & Criticism Words, Language & Grammar World Literature Writing & Publishing England Middle Ages Royalty
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This is a great book for the intellectual or academic individual (although ‘they’ probably know it all anyway) but, is not a fun read for people who simply enjoy poetry. It is obvious by the style of this book that it is not written for those of us not educated to the standards needed to understand the technical rules and reasons for rhyme. I found it quite a ‘sad lesson’ to listen to - it kind of took all the joy out of my personal enjoyment of poetry and I’m not sure why. Maybe because each poem “speaks” to me in its own voice and not in the voices of the ‘classes’ of those who wrote the work in different times. For some reason I found this classist and typically English..where we always judge (and always have) those who should and should not have the right to understand or enjoy writing. So, not a book I’d recommend. Just a book to read if you have an interest in poetry.

Informative and entertaining.

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