[According to the Preface, the editors meant] to compile a book of clues to good life and reading for week-end pairs and parties.... we have saved [readers] trouble by printing the titles, first lines and authors only, of those great poems which their pastors and masters in infancy and their poetic enthusiasms in adolescence have made sufficiently, if not excessively, familiar. These may be transcribed on the blank pages at the end of the book, or recited or banished from memory, according to individual taste and ability.... It is designed to supplement and balance to Oxford Book of English Verse (carried in the opposite pocket).