The Thousand Best Poems In The World (well, 500 at least)

‘The Thousand Greatest Poems in the World’ was a project of Edward William Cole (1832-1918) – bookseller and founder of Cole’s Book Arcade in Melbourne, Australia. ‘The Weekly Telegraph’ in 1893 caught the reputation of the extraordinary bookshop…

“Cole’s Book Arcade in Melbourne is the largest book selling business in the world. Mr. Cole keeps over a million book in stock…..People go in to read and spend hours on comfortable lounges, the greatest number going away without making a single purchase.”

The shop eventually filled an enormous three storey space with new books on the ground floor and used books above. It is no surprise that eventually the business moved into printing and Cole became compiler of a number of very successful titles. The most successful was ‘Cole’s Funny Picture Book,’ ‘Cole’s Fun Doctor’ and ‘Cole’s Treasury of Song.’

It was only a matter of time before Cole turned to poetry. He planned a two volume work (the above is the first volume). The problem is you have to know what the best thousand poems are and to have access to them..

Cole acknowledged these very real difficulties in his introductory remarks and therefore admitted freely that it might be fairer to say that what he in fact had was roughly 100 first-class poems, 300 second-class poems and 600 third-class poems.

Cole himself yielded to persuasion to include a poem of his own – his own tribute to books.