Born in 1343, Geoffrey Chaucer is the earliest writer of recognizably English poetry who is widely studied by undergraduates. Putting aside the difficultly of the slightly archaic nature of his middle English verse, his works are very accessible. They are also often very bawdy, containing frequent references to flatulence and sexual promiscuity. He is best known for his long poems, "The Canterbury Tales" and "Troilus and Criseyde."
William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest poet to ever have written in English. But Shakespeare's reputation hasn't always been as dogmatically defended as it is today. In fact, during the 17th and 18th centuries, many critics considered him a less skilled poet than many of his contemporaries, including Ben Jonson. However, by the dawn of the 19th century, Shakespeare had become canonized by the critics as the greatest poet in English.
John Milton, born in 1608, is most famous for his long epic poem on the temptation and fall of man, "Paradise Lost." At the time of its publication, it was controversial for its ambiguous portrayal of Satan, the unlikely hero of the first few books of the poem. Today, Milton is often revered as a poet second only to Shakespeare.
Alexander Pope, born in 1688, is most famous for his "Mock Epics" in which he would narrate the most banal happenings in the most elevated language imaginable. The most famous example of this is his "The Rape of the Lock," a long poem about a lock of a woman's hair being stolen by a joking suitor, written in the elevated language Homer's "Odyssey" (of which Pope, incidentally, also wrote one of the most widely used English translations).
Born in 1757, William Blake was the first of the Romantic poets. He was also an artist, and he illustrated almost all of his poems. Finally, he was a mystic, and believed that he had been visited by angels and the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures. His poetry deals with the relationship between innocence and experience, as well as that between heaven and hell. He is also famous for taking Milton's Satan and making him a less ambiguously heroic character. This nearly got him into trouble with the law during his lifetime.
Alfred Lord Tennyson was the most influential poet of the late 1800s. He wrote mostly on classical or medieval subjects and his greatest works center on characters such as Homer's Odysseus and the "Lady of Shallot," a figure loosely based on medieval Arthurian legend. Tennyson is today one of the most often quoted British poets.
The 20th century was mostly dominated by poets from outside of Britain, especially America and Ireland (and in the case of Dylan Thomas, Wales). But one British Poet does shine forth as immensely significant: W. H. Auden. His career, spanning more than 40 years, was marked by repeated critical success. Today, his most famous poem is "September 1st, 1939," which starts as a mediation on the outbreak of World War II but then shifts into a contemplation of life itself.