The 1820s and 1830s, the gap between Romanticism and Victorianism, continues to prove a difficulty for scholars. This book explores and recovers a neglected culture of poetry in those years, and it demonstrates that culture was a crucial turning point in literary history. It explores a uniquely wide range of poets, including the poetry of the literary annuals, Letitia Landon, Felicia Hemans, Robert Browning, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Hood and John Clare, placing their work in the light of new research into the conditions of the literary market. In turn, it uses that culture to open up wider theoretical issues relating to literary form, book history, print culture, gender and periodisation. The periods doubt about poetrys place in culture and its capacity to last prompted a dazzling range of creative experiments that reimagined the metrical, material and commercial forms of poetry.
1: 'Introduction'.
2: The Genius of the Times: Sales, Forms and Periods.
3: Infinite Profit in a Little Book: Ephemerality and the Annuals.
4: A Labyrinth of Difficulties and Distinctions: Landon, Darley, Browning.
5: A Fatal Gift: Formal Apparitions in Hemans and Beddoes.
6: The Proper Pathetic Face: Hunt, Reynolds, Hood, Praed.
7: A Living Doubt: Clare and Hartley.
8: 'Conclusion: From Byron to Tennyson.
This thoroughly engaging book shows how literary posteritys awkward burden of rescuing poets like Beddoes, Clare, Darley, and Landon from their perceived obscurity can be transformed into an illuminating discourse of doubt and self-awareness. Stewart helps us to see in these poets exquisitely accomplished writing a questioning of the present moment, even as it unfolds and takes flight. (Michael Bradshaw, John Clare Socil+
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