Pretending Not to Sleep (poetry) 1964

The Poetry of War, 1939-45 [editor] (poetry) 1965

Eight Poets [editor] (poetry) 1968

The Modern Poet: Essays from “The Review” [editor] (essays) 1968

The Visit (poetry) 1970

A Poetry Chronicle: Essays and Reviews (essays) 1973

Poems since 1900: An Anthology of British and American Verse in the Twentieth Century [co-editor, with Colin Falck] (poetry) 1974; republished as Poems since 1900: An Anthology, 1975

The Little Magazines: A Study of Six Editors (nonfiction) 1976

Robert Lowell: A Biography (biography) 1982

Yorkshire in Verse [editor] (poetry) 1984

The “New Review” Anthology [editor] (poetry) 1985

Fifty Poems (poetry) 1988

In Search of J. D. Salinger (biography) 1988

Writers in Hollywood, 1915-1951 (nonfiction) 1990

The Faber Book of Soccer [editor] (essays) 1992

Keepers of the Flame: Literary Estates and the Rise of Biography (nonfiction) 1992; republished as Keepers of the Flame: Literary Estates and the Rise of Biography, Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath, 1994

The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English [editor] (poetry) 1994

Walking Possession: Essays and Reviews, 1962-93 (essays) 1994

A Gift Imprisoned: The Poetic Life of Matthew Arnold (biography) 1998

“The Trouble with Money” and Other Essays (essays) 1998

Anthony Thwaite in Conversation with Peter Dale and Ian Hamilton (interviews) 1999

Sixty Poems (poetry) 1999

The Penguin Book of Twentieth Century Essays [editor] (essays) 2000

Against Oblivion: Some Lives of the Twentieth Century Poets (nonfiction) 2002

Ian Hamilton in Conversation with Dan Jacobson (interviews) 2002