Poetry

“Victorian Poetry” explores recent critical trends in Victorian studies by emphasizing poetry’s abundance, as part of the move to embrace a “bigger Victorianism.” A wide range of canonical and noncanonical poets are included (e.g., William Harrison Ainsworth, Shirley Brooks, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Eliza Cook, the Dutts, Thomas Hardy, Felicia Hemans, G.M. Hopkins, Amy Levy, William Parks, Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Tennyson), as well as a range of Victorian print formats (original poetry volumes, anthologies, editions, periodicals). The chapter begins by considering Victorian poetry in terms of its vibrant print culture, a heterogeneous, rich and diverse field that scholars are beginning to chart through digital projects. The following section addresses the media of Victorian poetry, particularly the verbal-visual dynamics of illustrated poetry. Finally, the chapter turns to poetry’s sense of relatedness to the modernity of its world, expressed through a burgeoning number of poems about dislocation and displacement.