By bringing together the emphases and techniques of modern linguistics and literary criticism and applying them to a range of poetry, from Shakespeare to the present day, A Linguistic History of English Poetry argues that poetry is uniquely and intrinsically different from other linguistic discourses and non-linguistic sign systems. A variety of approaches, including New Criticism, Formalism, Structuralism and Poststructuralism, are used to show how poetic structure and poetic signification have changed since the sixteenth century and interpretive models and methods are offered for criticizing poetry. Particular emphasis is placed on the texts' contexts, both in relation to literary history, and social, cultural and aesthetic considerations.

The book contains detailed readings of individual texts, including poems by Donne, Herbert, Marvell, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Keats, Shelly, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Hopkins, Pound, Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Dylan Thomas, Auden, e. e. cummings, Larken and E. J. Thribb, as well as a full glossary.