Victorian Poetry and the Poetics of the Literary Periodical

Redrawing the conventional map of Victorian Poetics

Victorian Poetry and the Poetics of the Literary Periodical offers an alternative history of Victorian poetry that asserts the fundamental importance of popular periodical poetry to our understanding of Victorian poetics. Reading the poetry of un-anthologised, unnamed and underappreciated poets alongside that of Tennyson, Barrett Browning and Rossetti, Ehnes argues that the popular poet is not a marginal poet: he, and especially she, occupies the centre of literary culture, producing the poetry consumed by the majority of Victorian readers.

Key Features

• Provides an invaluable index of the poetry published in the periodicals
• Includes brief biographic entries for each major figure discussed
• Analyses periodicals including Macmillan's Magazine, Charles Dickens's Household Words and All the Year Round, Once a Week, William Thackeray's Cornhill, the religious periodical Good Words, and the Argosy each as separate case study