Decadent Verse

This collection of poetry brings to life many of the important patterns of development in the verse of the late-Victorian period, and offers a fuller reflection of ‘decadence’ than those anthologies confined to the 1890s. ‘Major’ writers such as Tennyson, Browning, Hardy and Hopkins are presented alongside less well-known poets, fifty of whom are female, and other traditional figures such as Stevenson, William Morris and Christina Rossetti are given a fresh look. The book also contains a comparative chronology of prose 1872-1900 and of movements in the visual arts. Accompanied by an acclaimed critical commentary, the volume enables readers to discover poetry in the wider context of the literary, aesthetic and intellectual forces of the late-Victorian world as a whole.

A critical collection of late-Victorian poetry, fully annotated and explored, bringing to life the often overlooked but integral verse of the period.

This volume is both an essential resource for undergraduates and graduates studying Victorian and Decadent literature and an instructive work for enthusiastic readers of verse. The wide span of the 1872–1900 epoch enables readers to appreciate in great depth the literary developments that led to the fin de siècle, unlike most studies of this period, which focus solely on the 1890s, with no relation to cultural and historical developments in the previous two important decades.

Preface; Acknowledgements; Decadent Art 1872-1900; Introduction; Comparative Prose 1872-1900; Proem: The Way We Live Now; Verse selections from William Frederick Stevenson, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Edward Lear, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Mary E. Coleridge, Thomas Hardy, Alice Meynell, and many others; Sources and Names; Index of Titles; Index of First Lines; Index of Poets