THE
POCKET GUIDE TO VICTORIAN WRITERS AND POETS
by
Russell
James
In
any poll of the nation’s favourite poems today a good many will come from the
Victorian age. And in any listing of
classic novels the sturdy Victorians still burst to the fore. This book includes some 250 writers, giving
each a brief biography, a critical outline, and a note of important works to
look out for. Their biographies can be
surprising.
Victorian literary scandals
include:
* William Aytoun
and the ‘Spasmodic’ school of poetry
* the feuding Bulwer Lyttons
* the scandalous divorcees Ménie Muriel Dowie and Caroline
Norton
* the pugnacious Charles Reade
* and the self-destructive Oscar Wilde.
Bulwer Lytton
Extraordinary lives were
led by authors such as
* Amelia Barr (who showed that a woman was better
off without her man)
* the Countess of Blessington (did she, didn’t she, would she?)
* Wilfred Scawen
Blunt (rake and
scandal-maker)
* Edward Bulwer-Lytton (and his troublesome wife)
* Sir Richard Burton (geographic and sexual explorer)
* Baron Corvo (a living fiction of his own
creation)
* George Gissing (hell-bent on ruining his life)
* A J Munby (best known for his unconventional love life)
* Ouida (self-made and a snob)
* Laurence Oliphant (and the ‘Brotherhood of New Life’)
* H M Stanley (Livingstone was not his most
extraordinary adventure)
* and the campaigning W T Stead (the ‘sensational’ journalist).
But to many Victorians the greatest
scandal, already raging before Charles Darwin’s belief-battering book, was ‘The God Debate’ and, while Victorian Writers & Poets
does
not burden itself with the interminable details of that fight, it does give
space to some of its leading combatants: Robert Chambers, Charles Darwin, T H
Huxley, Benjamin Jowett, John Keble, Charles Kingsley, John Henry Newman and
the peaceable Mark Rutherford.
a notorious Darwin
cartoon
Less expected might be the inclusion of
several sexual revolutionaries, such
as Edward Carpenter, George Egerton, Havelock Ellis
and the poet, John Addington Symmonds. And I found it impossible to ignore those
notorious literary marriages, some unconsummated (Thomas Carlyle, Anna Jameson
and John Ruskin), some never legitimised (the most famous being that of George
Eliot).
Not all of the 250 writers in this book
led unconventional lives. Some were
merely unfortunate. Consider Valentine Durrant,
W E Henley, Lionel Johnson, Amy Levy, Philip Bourke Marston, Hugh Miller, and
the two unrelated poets, Francis Thompson and James Thomson. Others were – or were considered to be –
great thinkers, though I’m sure you can spot the odd man out among Walter
Bagehot, Thomas Carlyle, William Lecky, John Stuart Mill, Walter Pater, John
Ruskin, Samuel Smiles, Herbert Spencer, and the conjoined Beatrice & Sidney
Webb. Others simply wrote.
Who wrote Sweeney Todd?
Potboilers
flowed from the pens of many, including Harrison Ainsworth, Mrs Mary Braddon, Thomas Prest, J M Rymer and Mrs Henry Wood. Children’s
stories came from many hands; famous ones here include Helen Bannerman, J M
Barrie, Lewis Carroll, Mrs Ewing, George MacDonald, Mrs Molesworth
and the unfortunate Anna Sewell.
Best-sellers were produced by real-life
travellers such as Sir Richard
Burton, David Livingstone, J H Speke, H M Stanley – and, in his different
style, Robert Louis Stevenson. Poets in the book include
William Allingham, Malcolm Arnold, Alfred Austin, W E
Aytoun, William Barnes, The Brownings,
Ernest Dowson, William Morris, Coventry Patmore, Christina Rossetti, Swinburne,
Tennyson – even the excruciating William McGonagall and Martin Farquhar Tupper.
Christina Rossetti drawn by her brother
In Victorian Writers & Poets you’ll find many old friends – and
you’ll also learn a great deal they didn’t teach you at school!
A POCKET GUIDE TO
VICTORIAN WRITERS & POETS
by Russell James
published by Remember When (an imprint of Pen & Sword)
Recommended price £12.99 (though lower on the net)
ISBN 978 1 84468 083 2
Order online from the
publishers: http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/?product_id=2572
Or from Amazon:
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