Peter M. Sacks is an associate professor in the Writing Seminars and the Department of English at the Johns Hopkins University. He is also the author of In These Mountains, a book of poetry.

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsChapter 1. Interpreting the Genre: The Elegy and the Work of MourningChapter 2. Spenser: The Shepheardes Calender and "Astrophel"Chapter 3. Where Words Prevail Not: Grief, Revenge, and Language in Kyd and ShakespeareChapter 4. Milton: "Lycidas"Chapter 5. Jonson, Dryden, and GreyChapter 6. Shelley: "Adonais"Chapter 7. Tennyson: In MemoriamChapter 8. Swinburne: "Ave Atque Vale"Chapter 9. Hardy: "A Singer Asleep" and Poems of 1912-13Chapter 10. Yeats: "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory"Epilogue: The English Elegy after Years, a Note on the American ElegyNotexIndex

Sacks's careful readings, full of suggestive and learned observations ranging from the lexical to the mythic, give this booka cumulative effect that is almost as moving as the elegies themselves. Journal of Modern Literature.