Granger’s includes the full text of book-length poems, such as the masterpieces The Divine Comedy from Dante, in English translation as well as in the original Italian, Paradise Lost by Milton, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (both in modern translation and the original Middle English). These books are presented in parts as they were when published (cantos, books, and tales), found in the column on the left of the page once you have searched for the poem book title. Click on Canto 1 to begin reading Dante’s Inferno.  The left column remains visible so that after each canto, book, or tale has been read, it is easy to click on the next part to be read.

Other longer works include long poems that are not divided into parts, such as Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (we have both the 1798 and the 1817 versions). This involves simply scrolling down the page until you come to the end of the poem.

Poem sequences are another example of longer works: poems that can be read individually on their own but are connected to other poems by the same author on similar themes, such as Shakespeare’s Sonnets and AE Housman’s A Shropshire Lad. You can go from poem to poem in the order as they were published by clicking on “View Next” at the top of the left column, or you can browse the column and click on the poem title (or first line) of the poem you wish to read. Often there are commentaries for each of the individual poems in the series; click on “Commentary” at the top right of the page to read.

Many of these great longer works have had some portion or fragment anthologized.  These citations also appear on Granger’s, sometimes collected under the title: “Selections from Anthologies,” or sometimes appearing in the left column under the title with the complete text. If you want to read Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, you would start with Book One and scroll down the page until you have finished the book and are ready to navigate to Book 2. You can ignore the citations in the left column under Book One, etc: these are the indexed citations from anthologies. Or, you may be curious to read the parts of the poem that are most famous, and have been anthologized.  If you want to read Virgil’s Aeneid, after searching the poem title, you would choose Dryden’s translation, the complete text, for instance, rather than “Selections from Anthologies.”