Dowson, Jane, and Alice Entwistle, A History of Twentieth-Century British Women's Poetry, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

This comprehensive review of Great Britain's women poets of the twentieth century is an easy, accessible, and interesting read on this often overlooked group of British writers. The entire book is an excellent overview of the cultural, literary, political, and personal events that shaped the poets' work. Section 10, “Dialogic Politics in Carol Ann Duffy and Others,” highlights Duffy's poetry.

Duffy, Carol Ann, The Salmon Carol Ann Duffy: Poems Selected and New 1985-1999, Salmon Publishing, 2000.

This collection is superb for readers interested in gaining a good perspective on Duffy's entire volume of work. It contains poems from Standing Female Nude (1985), Selling Manhattan (1987), The Other Country (1990), Mean Time (1993), and The World's Wife (1999) along with four poems at the end in a section titled simply “Stray Poems.” That Duffy selected all the poems...