Editing Herbert Read (section)

==Early work==
Read's first volume of poetry was ''Songs of Chaos'', self-published in 1915. His second collection, published in 1919, was called ''Naked Warriors'', and drew on his experiences fighting in the trenches of the First World War. His work, which shows the influence of [[Imagism]] and the [[Metaphysical poets]],<ref>{{cite web|url=http://charleswhalley.tumblr.com/post/10609984030/metafiddlesticks-eliots-donne-and-the|title=- 'Metafiddlesticks!': Eliot's Donne and the Possibilities of the Neo-Metaphysical Speaker, 1917-1935|work=tumblr.com|access-date=17 January 2015}}</ref> was mainly in [[free verse]]. His ''Collected Poems''<ref name=CollectedPoems>Read, Herbert, ''Collected Poems'', London: [[Faber & Faber]], 1966.</ref> appeared in 1946. As a critic of literature, Read mainly concerned himself with the [[Romantic poetry|English Romantic poets]] (for example, ''The True Voice of Feeling: Studies in English Romantic Poetry'', 1953) but was also a close observer of imagism.<ref>Hughes, Glen, ''Imagism and the Imagists: A Study in Modern Poetry'', Stanford University Press, 1931 (reprinted by Biblo and Tannen, New York, 1972, {{ISBN|0-8196-0282-5}})</ref> He published a novel, ''[[The Green Child]]''. He contributed to the ''[[The Criterion (magazine)|Criterion]]'' (1922–39) and he was for many years a regular art critic for ''[[The Listener (magazine)|The Listener]]''.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Goodway|first1=David|title=Anarchist seeds beneath the snow : left-libertarian thought and British writers from William Morris to Colin Ward|date=2012|publisher=PM Press|location=[New ed.]|isbn=978-1604862218|page=180|edition=New}}</ref>

While [[W. B. Yeats]] chose many poets of the Great War generation for ''[[Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892–1935|The Oxford Book of Modern Verse]]'' (1936), Read arguably stood out among his peers by virtue of the 17-page excerpt (nearly half of the entire work) of his ''The End of a War'' (Faber & Faber, 1933).

Read was also interested in the art of writing. He cared deeply about style and structure and summarized his views in ''English Prose Style'' (1928),<ref>Read, Herbert, ''English Prose Style'', London: G. Bell & Son London; New York: Holt, 1928.</ref> a primer on, and a philosophy of, good writing. The book is considered one of the best on the foundations of the English language, and how those foundations can be and have been used to write English with elegance and distinction.