Reynard the Fox

This long poem in two parts describes a fox hunt in the English countryside. In the first part, the riders gather at an inn on a bright morning, and Masefield paints a portrait of each, the squire, the parson, the doctor, the farmers, the young lovers and the hunt servants, much as Chaucer described his pilgrims. In the second part the poem changes sides: the reader runs with the fox, feeling his fear, his cunning and his exhaustion as he flees across miles of fields, woods and streams with the hounds close behind him.

John Masefield (1878–1967), who later became Poet Laureate, published the poem in 1919, just after the First World War, and its vivid, galloping verse made it one of his most popular works. This edition is illustrated by Carton Moore-Park. Its gallery of riders recalls the prologue to The Canterbury Tales.