Professor Richard Cronin lectures in nineteenth–century literature in the department of English Literature at the University of Glasgow. His publications include 1798: The Year of the Lyrical Ballads (1998), The Politics of Romantic Poetry: In Search of the Pure Commonwealth (2000), Romantic Victorians: English Literature, 1824–1840 (2000), A Companion to Victorian Poetry (co–edited with Antony H. Harrison and Alison Chapman, Blackwell, 2002), and Paper Pellets: British Literary Culture after Waterloo (2010).

1 Introduction: The Victorian Poetry Palace 1

2 The Divided Self and the Dramatic Monologue 27

3 Victorian Metrics 65

4 Short Poems, Long Poems and the Victorian Sonnet Sequence 89

5 Victorian Poetry and Translation 114

6 Victorian Poetry and Life 141

7 Poetry and Religion 174

8 Conclusion: The 1890s 196

Bibliography 220

Index 229