The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Women's Poetry

Inclusive, cutting-edge essay collection by leading scholars on Victorian women poets and their diverse poetic forms and identities.

Linda K. Hughes (Edited by)

9781316633571, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 March 2019

332 pages, 8 b/w illus.
22.7 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.55 kg

'All of the chapters are deeply informed and scholarly, but also readable and accessible.' Martin Dubois, Tennyson Research Bulletin

The Victorian period has a strong tradition of poetry written by women. In this Companion, leading scholars deliver accessible and cutting-edge essays that situate Victorian women's poetry in its relation to print culture, diverse identities, and aesthetic and cultural issues. The book is inclusive in method, demonstrating, for example, the benefits of both distant and close reading approaches, and featuring major figures like Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti and over one hundred poets altogether. Thematically arranged, the chapters deliver studies on a comprehensive array of subjects that address women's poetry in its manifold forms and investigate its global context. Essays shed light on children's poetry, domestic relations, sexualities, and stylistic artifice and conclude by looking at how women poets placed their published poems and how we can 'place' Victorian women poets today.

List of illustrations
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgments
Chronology of publications and events, compiled by Sofia Prado Huggins
1. Introduction Linda K. Hughes
Part I. Form and the Senses: 2. Genres Monique R. Morgan
3. Prosody Meredith Martin
4. Haunted by voice Elizabeth Helsinger
5. Floating worlds: wood engraving and women's poetry Lorraine Janzen Kooistra
6. Embodiment and touch Jason R. Rudy
Part II. Women's Poetry in the World: 7. Publishing and reception Alexis Easley
8. Transatlanticism, transnationality, and cosmopolitanism Alison Chapman
9. Dialect, region, class, work Kirstie Blair
10. Politics, protest, interventions: beyond a poetess tradition Marjorie Stone
11. Religion and spirituality Charles Laporte
Part III. Nurturance and Contested Naturalness: 12. Children's poetry Laurie Langbauer and Beverly Taylor
13. Marriage, motherhood, and domesticity Emily Harrington
14. Sexuality Jill Ehnenn
15. Poets of style: poetries of asceticism and excess Ana Parejo Vadillo
Part IV. Reading Victorian Women's Poetry: 16. Distant reading and Victorian women's poetry Natalie M. Houston
Afterword. Nineteenth-century women's poetry in the field of vision Isobel Armstrong
Further reading
Appendix. Poets' biographies.

Subject Areas: Literary companions, book reviews & guides [DSRC], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF], Literature: history & criticism [DS]