Some of the poets selected for this volume of verse by women are well known, such as the Brontes, and some are even fashionable, such as Stevie Smith. Others are unfamiliar names, barely read nowadays. But all of them write with intensity and have messages about inner life, and particularly the contemplation of death and immortality. 18th and 19th-century women were no strangers to death, and in the 1990s, as attitudes change, their poetry can be read with more understanding. Julia Neuberger was rabbi at the South London Synagogue for 11 years and is the author of "Whatever's Happening to Women?".