This engaging volume provides readers with the essential criticism on nineteenth-century poetry, organised around key areas of debate in the field.

Jonathan Herapath is College Chaplain and Tutor in English on the Sarah Lawrence Programme at Wadham College, Oxford, UK.

Emma Mason is Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, UK.

Introduction, Emma Mason

Part 1: Periodization

Introduction, Francis O'Gorman

1. Preface to Poems, Matthew Arnold

2. Romanticism as a "Modern Tradition", Robert Langbaum

3. Poetry and its Times, Matthew Reynolds

4. Rhythm and Will, Matthew Campbell

5. E. C. Stedman and the Invention of Victorian Poetry, Michael C. Cohen

Part 2: 'What is poetry?'

Introduction, Rosie Miles

6. A Defence of Poetry, P. B. Shelley

7. What is poetry?, J. S. Mill

8. Introduction, Eric Griffiths

9. What kind of a critical category is "women's poetry"?, Marion Thain

10. Female Picturesque and Colonial Settings in the Gift Books, Serena Baiesi

Part 3: Politics

Introduction, Ankhi Mukherjee

11. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Angela Leighton

12. Introduction, Isobel Armstrong

13. Introduction, Mike Sanders

14. Introduction, Matthew Bevis

15. Introduction, Mary Ellis Gibson

Part 4: Prosody

Introduction, Natalie Hoffman

16. XVIII: Language of Metrical Composition, S. T. Coleridge

17. English Metrical Law, Coventry Patmore

18. Investigation of Sound as Artistic Material, Sidney Lanier

19. Prosody Wars, Meredith Martin

20. Rhyme's End, Adela Pinch

Part 5: Forms

Introduction, Martin Dubois

21. Poetics, E. S. Dallas

22. Ancient or Modern, Ancient and Modern, J. R. Watson

23. Introduction, Herbert Tucker

24. The Sonnet and the Lyric Sequence, Joseph Phelan

25. The Divided Self and the Dramatic Monologue, Richard Cronin

Part 6: Emotion, feeling, affect

Introduction: Emma Mason

26. Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth

27. Lecture 1, John Keble

28. The role and treatment of emotion in Victorian criticism of poetry, Isobel Armstrong

29. Coleridge to Wilde, Adam Potkay

30. Soul: Inside Hopkins, William Cohen

Part 7: Religion

Introduction: Jonathan Herapath

31. Tracts 80 and 87: On Reserve, Isaac Williams

32. The Face of the Deep, Christina Rossetti

33. Hopkins, J. Hillis Miller

34. Robert Browning's Sacred and Legendary Art, Charles LaPorte

35. Introduction, Kirstie Blair

Part 8: Sexuality

Introduction, Stefano Evangelisto

36. The Poetry of Sorrow, Manley Hopkins

37. The Fleshly School of Poetry, Robert Buchanan

38. Sexual Inversion: Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Havelock Ellis

39. Wilde's fatal effeminacy, Joseph Bristow

40. Introduction, Yopie Prins

Part 9. Science

Introduction, Gregory Tate

41. Science Versus Poetry, William Chambers and Robert Chambers

42. Thoughts on a Pebble, or a First Lesson in Geology, G. A. Mantell

43. Helmholtz, Tyndall, Gerard Manley Hopkins: Leaps of the Prepared Imagination, Gillian Beer

44. Introduction, Jason Rudy

45. Poetry and Science & Nature as Culture, Culture as Society, Ashton Nichols