Victorian Poetry

JOSEPH BRISTOW

unrecognized sensations, Swinburne occupies a position that has a certain
familiarity. Swinburne's firm belief in "art for art's sake" - partly derived
from Theophile Gautier's "Preface" to the sexually controversial novel
Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835) - in some respects led poetry back into the
Tennysonian garden where the poet's mind had to be protected from
intruders. It would be left to later Victorian poets to figure out if it were
possible - or even desirable - for their art to return to the people.

NOTES

My thanks to James Walter Caufield for casting his critical eye over this chapter.
1 Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Mask of Anarchy," in Shelley's Poetry and Prose, ed.
Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers (New York: W.W. Norton, 1977),
301.
2 Shelley, "England in 1819," in Shelley's Poetry and Prose, 311. This poem was
first published in 1839.
3 William Wordsworth, "To Lord Lonsdale," 24 February 1832, in The Letters of
William and Dorothy Wordsworth, second edition, ed. Chester L. Shaver et al.,
8 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967-93), V, 499.
4 [John Fullarton,] "Reform in Parliament," Quarterly Review 45 (1831), 283;
further page reference appears in parentheses.
5 [Anonymous,] "Parliamentary Reform Bill," Westminster Review 15 (1831),
150.
6 Harold Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1969), 313.
7 Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society, 315.
8 [John Wilson,] "Tennyson's Poems," Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 31
(1832), 723; further page references appear in parentheses.
9 Ebenezer Elliott, "The Black Hole of Calcutta," in Elliott, The Splendid Village:
Corn-Law Rhymes; and Other Poems, first collected edition, 3 vols. (London:
Benjamin Still, 1834); volume and page references appear in parentheses.
10 [T. Peronnet Thompson,] A Catechism on the Corn Laws; with a List of
Fallacies and the Answers, third edition (London: James Ridgway, 1827), 22.
11 [Anonymous,] "Poetry by the People," Athenaeum (11 June 1831), 370.
12 Jeremy Bentham, The Rationale of Reward (London: John and H.L. Hunt,
1825), 206; further page number appears in parentheses.
13 Robert Burns, "Song - For a' that and a' that" (1795), in Burns, The Poems and
Songs of Robert Burns, ed. James Kinsley, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1968), II, 762.
14 [John Johnstone,] "The Radical Poets," Tait's Edinburgh Magazine 1 (1832),
140; further page number appear in parentheses.
15 [John Wilson,] "Poetry of Ebenezer Elliott," Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine
35 (1834), 821; further page reference appears in parentheses.
16 [W. J. Fox,] Review of Tennyson, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, Westminster Review
14 (1831), 210-24, reprinted in Isobel Armstrong, Victorian Scrutinies:
Reviews of Poetry, 1830-1870 (London: Athlone, 1972), 71; further page
references appear in parentheses.