Decadent Verse

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. It is within this crucial period that great figures such as Tennyson, Ruskin, Hardy, Stevenson, Hopkins, Browning, Carroll and Lear flourished, with some of their most significant works presented here. Decadent Verse also gives voice to women poets often overlooked by other anthologies. Thus, the talents of Emily Pfeiffer, Ellice Hopkins, Sarah Williams, Mathilde Blind, Lucy Knox and Nora Hopper to name but a few form a significant part of the text, providing a fuller, more rounded understanding of the literature and social dynamics of the period. In addition, the wide span of the 18721900 epoch enables readers to appreciate in great depth the literary developments that led to the fin de siegrave;cle, unlike most studies of this period, which focus solely on the 1890s, with no relation to the important cultural and historical developments in the previous two decades.

Caroline Blyth teaches English at Royal Holloway, University of London. She edited Critical Quarterly: The Making of the Reader (Blackwells, 2003) and has contributed to Poetry Review.