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. Acknowledgments ix

1 Introduction: The Victorian Poetry Palace 1

2 The Divided Self and the Dramatic Monologue 27

3 Victorian Metrics 65

4 Short Poems, Long Poems and the Victorian Sonnet Sequence 89

5 Victorian Poetry and Translation 114

6 Victorian Poetry and Life 141

7 Poetry and Religion 174

8 Conclusion: The 1890s 196

Bibliography 220

Index 229

“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

“[A] compelling new critical survey of the period’s poems … Cronin’s deft close readings enable … shifts and juxtapositions, and the assured breadth of his knowledge and reference … It is a definite strength of Cronin’s approach that his own book’s attempt to recover ways of appreciating and understanding Victorian poetry overlaps with the techniques Victorian poets themselves used to address and forestall their anxieties about the meaning and value of their work. [It] proves to be a good way of tuning in to the distinctive music of the Victorian poem.” The Tennyson Society

Richard Cronin is emeritus professor of English Literature at the University of Glasgow. His publications include 1798: The Year of the Lyrical Ballads (1998), The Politics of Romantic Poetry: In Search of the Pure Commonwealth (2000), Romantic Victorians: English Literature, 1824–1840 (2002), A Companion to Victorian Poetry (co-edited with Antony H. Harrison and Alison Chapman, Wiley Blackwell, 2002, 2007), Paper Pellets: British Literary Culture after Waterloo (2010), and the 21st-Century Oxford Authors’ Robert Browning (co-edited with Dorothy McMillan, 2015).

“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. "This is a distinguished, authoritative, and fluent book, which will provoke discussion and be genuinely useful to readers." Francis O'Gorman, Leeds University