General Editors:
Charlotte Brewer, Hertford College, Oxford
H. R. Woudhuysen, University College London
Daniel Karlin, University of Sheffield
Though traditionally neglected in nineteenth-century literary studies, Victorian women poets have been the subject of increasing attention and study in recent years. This annotated anthology offers a key selection of poems by thirteen such poets from Felicia Hemans (whose traditional influence reigned long after her death in 1835) to the witty, iconoclastic May Kendall, who lived until 1943.
The book starts with a substantial general Introduction which places the work of the poets into a context both historical (that of the poems production) and modern (that of their past and present reception). Each poets work is introduced by an expansive headnote which tells the story of her life and writing career. The poems all have full explanatory notes to help readers unfamiliar with the period. A Bibliography lists general sources as well as useful further readings.
Written in an engaging and accessible manner, the extensive annotations throughout Victorian Women Poets ensure that this fascinating poetry is enjoyable for undergraduate and non-specialist readers alike.
Virginia Blain is Professor of English at Macquarie University in Sydney.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 356-376) and index.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
The current status of Victorian women poets
The basis of the present selection
Felicia Hemans as the first Victorian poet
The professionalisation of the woman poet
Changing poetic tastes and styles
Anxiety of genre
Femininity and sexual difference
The poetess and the woman poet
The challenge of the new sciences to religious orthodoxy
Humour and dreams in womens poetry
Note on the text of this anthology
THE POETS:
Felicia Hemans (1793-1835)
Epitaph on Mr W-
The Wife of Asdrubal
Properzia Rossi
Joan of Arc in Rheims
The Homes of England
The Palm-tree
Casabianca
Woman and Fame
To a Wandering Female Singer
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
A Thought for a Lonely Death-bed
The Ladys Yes
The Cry of the Children
Bertha in the Lane
Loved One
The Runaway Slave at Pilgrims Point
Hiram Powers Greek Slave
A Mans Requirements
A Curse for a Nation
A Musical Instrument
Mother and Poet
Emily Pfeiffer (1827-1890)
Nathaniel to Ruth
Peace to the odalisque, whose morning glory
Among the Hebrides
To Nature I
To Nature IV
To a Moth that Drinketh of the Ripe October I
To a Moth that Drinketh of the Ripe October II
Aspiration I
A Chrysalis
Studies from the Antiques
Kassandra I
Kassandra II
Klytemnestra I
The Fight at Rorkes Drift
The Bower among the Beans
The Cruse of Tears. A Russian Legend
Mid-ocean
The Witchs Last Ride
Any Husband to Many a Wife
The Sonsy Milkmaid
Christina Rosetti (1830-1894)
Goblin Market
A Birthday
My Dream
Maude Clare
Song
A Better Resurrection
The World
Old and New Year Ditties 3
Long Barren
Autumn Violets
Two Thoughts of Death
In an Artists Studio
Augusta Webster (1837-1894)
Passing Away
Medea in Athens [extract]
A Castaway [extract]
Where Home Was
The Flood of Is in Brittany
From Mother and Daughter. An Uncompleted Sonnet-Sequence
II
VI
VII
XI
XVI
XX
XXVII
Adah Isaacs Menken (1839-1868)
Judith
Myself
Genius
Aspiration
A Memory
Answer Me
Mathilde Blind (1841-1896)
Manchester by Night
Haunted Streets
Motherhood
On a Forsaken Larks Nest
The Red Sunsets, 1883
A Winter Landscape
From Love in Exile
I
II
IV
The Message
Many Will Love You
A Fantasy
Scarabæus Sisyphus
Mourning Women
Noonday Rest
'Michael Field' (Katherine Harris Bradley, 1846-1914 and Edith Emma Cooper, 1862-1913)
From Long Ago
XIV
XXIV
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
LII [Tiresias]
LXV
LIndifférent
La Gioconda
Thanatos, thy praise I sing
A girl
It was deep April, and the morn
Irises
Cyclamens
Constancy
Tiger-lilies
Renewal
A Flaw
Onycha
A Palimpsest
Second Thoughts
Wheat-miners
Will You Crucify Your King?
Loved, on a sudden thou didst come to me
Lovers
Lo, my loved is dying, and the call
Constance Naden (1858-1889)
The Sister of Mercy
The Pantheists Song of Immortality
Love Versus Learning
Moonlight and Gas
The Two Artists
Loves Mirror
Evolutional Erotics
[1] Scientific Wooing
[2] The New Orthodoxy
[3] Natural Selection
[4] Solomon Redivivus, 1886
The Pessimists Vision
Poet and Botanist
Rosamund Marriott Watson (1860-1911)
Old Pauline
Ballad of the Bide-bride
Betty Barnes, the Book-burner
Of the Earth, Earthy
Aubade
An Enchanted Princess
The Moor Girls Well
A Ballad of the Were-wolf
&nbssp; Vespertilia
Hic Jacet
A Midnight Harvest
Serenade
Die Zauberflöte
A Ruined Altar
The White Lady
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861-1907)
To Memory
The Other Side of a Mirror
Master and Guest
He came unto His own, and His own received Him not
True to myself am I, and false to all
Our Lady
Doubt
The Witch
Awake
Marriage
On a Bas-relief on Pelops and Hippodameia
In Dispraise of the Moon
Wilder spin
Death
Pride
Wasted
The fire, the lamp, and I, were alone together
September
The White Women
O Earth, my mother! Not upon thy breast
No Newspapers
A Clever Woman
Alcestis to Admetus
Solo
Sadness
Words
Some in a child would live, some in a book
May Kendall (Emma Goldworth, 1861-1943)
Lay of the Trilobite
Ballad of the Ichthyosaurus
The Philanthropist and the Jelly-fish
Womans Future
Ballad of Cadger
The Last Performance
Church Echoes
1. Vicars Daughter
2. Charity Child
3. Tramp
Failures
The Sandblast Girl and the Acid Man
Underground
In the Toy Shop
Amy Levy (1861-1889)
Run to Death
Sinfornia Eroica
Magdalen
Christopher Found
To Lallie
A London Plane-tree
Ballade of an Omnibus
London Poets
In the Mile End Road
The Old House
Captivity
Cambridge in the Long
Oh, is it Love?
The First Extra
Philosophy
A Ballad of Religion and Marriage
Bibliography
Index of Titles and First Lines