The Oxford Book of Australian Women's Verse

In his review of this, and another Australian anthology, in The Times Literary Supplement, Clive James noted that this anthology "is unburdened by didactic jargon and makes commendably little fuss about the necessarily agonizing problem of getting everybody in without leaving too many good poems out." He notices that some poems are written by Australian expatriates though he finds that each is "an Australian poem wherever it was written."^[4]

Ian Davis, in The Canberra Times, concluded his review by stating "Lever's anthology has done a valuable job in bringing not only such classics as "Woman to Man" yet again to our attention but also a swag of almost forgotten poems which remind us that the Australian poetic tradition (male and female) is much more complex than we might think if we read only the standard anthologies."^[5]

The Cambridge History of Australian Literature called this anthology one of the "landmarks in the affirmation of a collective notion of women's poetry in Australia."^[6]

The Oxford Literary History of Australia, in comparing this book with the other anthologies of Australian women's poetry noted that with "a stronger historical consciousnessness, Lever's is a more relaxed anthology, less driven to publish experimental work and covering a wider range of voices."^[7]

• 1995 in Australian literature