BVBook Verdict

If you liked

Books like Piers the Plowman

Loved Piers the Plowman by William Langland? Here are 10 books with a similar appeal — drawn mostly from poetry, ranked by how confidently we'd recommend them next.

10 books · ranked

  1. 1

    The Waste Land

    T.S. Eliot · 1922 · Poetry

    The fractured, allusive poem that became the emblem of modernism; difficult, dazzling, endlessly studied.

  2. 2

    Devotions

    Mary Oliver · 2017 · Poetry

    A career-spanning selection from a poet of attention and the natural world; the perfect place to begin.

  3. 3

    Epigrammata

    Marcus Valerius Martialis · 1501 · Poetry

    Despite his enduring popularity, Martial has recently suffered from serious critical neglect. The present work is the first edition of selections from Martial to be published for decades, and the firs

  4. 4

    Come hither

    Walter De la Mare · 1602 · Poetry

    A distinguished poet's selection of poems along with his personal and informative notes to explain the theme or meaning and to add interest to the poems.

  5. 5

    Milton's Poems

    John Milton · 1605 · Poetry

    John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem Paradise Lost, written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of

  6. 6

    Silvae

    Publius Papinius Statius · 1472 · Poetry

    Statius' Silvae, thirty-two occasional poems, were written probably between 89 and 96 AD. Here the poet congratulates friends, consoles mourners, sends thanks, admires a memorable scene. The verse is

  7. 7

    Leaves of Grass

    Walt Whitman · 1855 · Poetry

    Expansive, body-and-soul American free verse; the revolutionary collection Whitman revised all his life.

  8. 8

    Ariel

    Sylvia Plath · 1965 · Poetry

    Fierce, exact late poems published after the poet's death; raw and technically brilliant.

  9. 9

    Night Sky with Exit Wounds

    Ocean Vuong · 2016 · Poetry

    Tender, violent poems of family, war and desire; a striking debut collection.

  10. 10

    Death of a Naturalist

    Seamus Heaney · 1966 · Poetry

    Earthy, precise poems of rural Ireland and boyhood; the debut of a Nobel laureate.

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