In a work that is uniquely comprehensive and theoretically astute, Isobel Armstrong rescues Victorian poetry from its longstanding sepia image as `a moralised form of romantic verse', and unearths its often subversive critique of nineteenth-century culture and politics.

With the publication of his ambitious new work Victorian Poets and the Politics of Culture, Antony H. Harrison continues his exploration of poetry as a significant force in the construction of English culture from 1837-1900. In chapters focusing on Victorian medievalist discourse, Alfred Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Matthew Arnold, and Christina Rossetti, Harrison examines a range of Victorian poems in order to show the cultural work they accomplish. He illuminates, for example, such culturally prominent Victorian mythologies as the exaltation of motherhood, the Romanic appropriation of transcendent art, and the idealization of the gypsy as a culturally alien, exotic Other. His investigation of the ways in which the authors intervene in the discourses that articulate such mythologies and thereby accrue cultural power--along with his analysis of what constitutes "cultural power"--are original contributions to the field of Victorian studies. "The power of Victorian poetry by midcentury was enhanced by the institutionalization of particular channels through which it circulated," Harrison writes. "poetry was 'consumed' in more varied forms than was other literature." Victorian Poets and the Politics of Culture has implications for both cultural studies and the study of literature outside the Victorian period.

Victorian Poets and the Changing Bible charts the impact of post-Enlightenment biblical criticism on English literary culture. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a widespread reevaluation of biblical inspiration, in which the Bible’s poetic nature came to be seen as an integral part of its religious significance. Understandably, then, many poets who followed this interpretative revolution—including Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning—came to reconceive their highest vocational ambitions: if the Bible is essentially poetry, then modern poetry might perform a cultural role akin to that of scripture. This context equally illuminates the aims and achievements of famous Victorian unbelievers such as Arthur Hugh Clough and George Eliot, who also responded enthusiastically to the poetic ideal of an inspired text. Building upon a recent and ongoing reevaluation of religion as a vital aspect of Victorian culture, Charles LaPorte shows the enduring relevance of religion in a period usually associated with its decline. In doing so, he helps to delineate the midcentury shape of a literary dynamic that is generally better understood in Romantic poetry of the earlier part of the century. The poets he examines all wrestled with modern findings about the Bible's fortuitous historical composition, yet they owed much of their extraordinary literary success to their ability to capitalize upon the progress of avant-garde biblical interpretation. This book's revisionary and provocative thesis speaks not only to the course of English poetics but also to the logic of nineteenth-century literary hierarchies and to the continuing evolution of religion in the modern era. Victorian Literature and Culture Series

Over 170 beloved poems by the major poets of the 19th century, including works by Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Rossetti, Meredith, Swinburne, Hopkins, Kipling, and others. An introduction and biographical notes on the poets are included.

Barrow’s timely book is the first to examine the link between Victorian poetry, the study of language, and political reform. Focusing on a range of literary, scientific, and political texts, Barrow demonstrates that nineteenth-century debates about language played a key role in shaping emergent ideas about popular sovereignty. While Victorian scientists studied the origins of speech, the history of dialects, and the barrier between human and animal language, poets such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and Thomas Hardy drew on this research to explore social unrest, the expansion of the electorate, and the ever-widening boundaries of empire. Science, Language, and Reform in Victorian Poetry recovers unacknowledged links between poetry, philology, and political culture, and contributes to recent movements in literary studies that combine historicist and formalist approaches.

Daniel Karlin has selected poetry written and published during the reign of Queen Victoria, (1837-1901). Giving pride of place to Tennyson, Robert Browning, and Christina Rossetti, the volume offers generous selections from other major poets such asArnold, Emily Bronte, Hardy and Hopkins, and makes room for several poem-sequences in their entirety. It is wonderful, too, in its discovery and inclusion of eccentric, dissenting, un-Victorian voices, poets who squarely refuse to 'represent' their period. It also includes the work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Meredith, James Thomson and Augusta Webster.

The discussion of each poem attends to the complexity of the poem's utterance, its historical contexts, and its broader implications for cultural meaning.Victorian Literature and Culture Series

This reader contains sixteen new and recent essays addressing work by, and issues raised concerning, Victorian women poets. Among those discussed directly are: Elizabeth Barrett Browing, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Michael Field, Felicia Hemans, Adelaide Proctor, Christina Rossetti, and Rosamund Marriott Watson. Key topics dealt with include the nature of home,the market, the fallen woman and the moral law, the mother, and the muse. Critics represented are: Isobel Armstrong, Kathleen Blake, Susan Conley, Stevie Davies, Sandra M. Gilbert, Gill Gregory, Terrence Holt, Linda K. Hughes, Angela Leighton, Tricia Lootens, Jerome J. McGann, Dorothy Mermin, Margaret Reynolds, Dolores Rosenblum, Chris White, and Joyce Zonana.

Victorian Poets: A Critical Reader features a collection of critical essays focusing on various aspects of Victorian-era poetry from the 1830s to the 1890s. Presents key criticism on Victorian poetry Features contributions from a variety of scholars in the field Illustrates the full range of critical approaches to the Victorian poets, including attention to texts, words, forms, modes, and sub-genres Offers fresh reinterpretations, many driven by contemporary ideological interests, including gender questions, selfhood, and body issues

Reading Victorian Poetry “Richard Cronin’s exceptionally fine book carries out just what its title promises – reading. The pleasure of his adroit, meticulously imaginative insights into verbal and metrical effects is constant … One of the best general readings of Victorian poetry in the last ten years.” Victorian Studies “Reading Victorian Poetry will make an excellent introduction to Victorian poetry and gives a good account of a number of key issues.” English Studies Reading Victorian Poetry offers close readings of poems from the Victorian era, carefully selected by the author to reflect the breadth and diversity of nineteenth-century poetry. Richard Cronin’s outstanding consideration of a wide range of poets reflects the unusual diversity of Victorian poetry, which includes, amongst others, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, D.G. Rossetti, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. The book investigates key concerns of the era in which poetry was ousted by the novel from the culturally central position that it had enjoyed for centuries. The result is an important and exciting contribution to the understanding of nineteenth-century poetry, and a crucial resource for anyone interested in Victorian literature.