This is the second volume of Oxford's three-volume edition of
The Complete Poems of William Barnes
. Volume II contains all the poems Barnes wrote in the modified form of the Dorset dialect that he used from the mid 1850s onwards: those in the second and third collections of his
Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect
(1859 and 1862); those from the first collection (1844), originally written in the broad form of the dialect and here re-written in the modified form);
The Song of Solomon
in the Dorset dialect (1859); poems published in newspapers and periodicals after 1855 but not included in any of his collections; and posthumously published poems surviving in manuscript. Variants are included from all surviving versions of the poems. There are two introductions, the first general and the second textual. Notes on the poems record their provenance, describe their prosody, and add contextualizing information. The volume concludes with discursive appendices on textual, literary, and dialectological matters, a list of references cited, an annotated glossary, a glossary of place-names occurring in the poems, and an index of titles and first lines.