Category

Victorian

Poetry written in England during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), including by poets Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and others.

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  • Glossary Terms

    Victorian

    Poetry written in England during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) may be referred to as Victorian poetry. Following Romanticism, Victorian poets continued many of the previous era’s main themes, such as religious skepticism and valorization of the artist as genius; but Victorian poets also developed a distinct sensibility. The writers of this period are known for their interest in verbal embellishment, mystical interrogation, brooding skepticism, and whimsical nonsense. The most prolific and well-regarded poets of the age included Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Matthew Arnold, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Oscar Wilde. Browse more Victorian poets.

  • Author

    Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

    Writer, doctor, and educator Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, earned a BA at Harvard University in 1829 and an MD from Harvard Medical School in 1836. He was part of a group of …
  • Author

    Thomas Carlyle

    Thomas Carlyle was an extremely long-lived Victorian author. He was also highly controversial, variously regarded as sage and impious, a moral leader, a moral desperado, a radical, a conservative, a Christian…
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    Charlotte Brontë

    One of the most famous Victorian women writers, and a prolific poet, Charlotte Brontë is best known for her novels, including Jane Eyre (1847), her most popular. Like her contemporary Elizabeth Barrett Browning…
  • Author

    Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

    British writer Mary Coleridge was well known in her day as a novelist and essayist; now, she is better known for her poetry. The great-grandniece of Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the daughter of…
  • Author

    Robert Louis Stevenson

    Robert Louis Stevenson is best known as the author of the children’s classic Treasure Island (1882), and the adult horror story, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). Both of these novels have…
  • Author

    William Miller

    William Miller was born in Glasgow, Scotland. Trained as a cabinetmaker, he began writing poetry as a young man. Miller placed many of his poems, written in Scots, in local newspapers and journals. Known as…
  • Author

    Thomas Love Peacock

    Thomas Love Peacock was an accomplished poet, essayist, opera critic, and satiric novelist. During his lifetime his works received the approbation of other writers (some of whom were Peacock’s friends and …
  • Author

    Edmund Gosse

    British literary critic, translator, and poet Edmund Gosse was the son of Philip Henry Gosse, a zoologist and preacher for the Plymouth Brethren. The poet was born in 1849, in the midst of Victorian England…
  • Author

    Austin Dobson

    Born in Plymouth, England, in 1840, poet, essayist, and biographer Henry Austin Dobson studied to be a civil engineer in Strasbourg, France. He lived in London and worked for the Board of Trade, becoming principal…
  • Author

    Alice Meynell

    British essayist and poet Alice Meynell was born to educated parents in 1847. She and her sister, a painter, spent their bohemian childhood partly in Italy. Meynell published Preludes (1875), her first book…
  • Author

    Katharine Tynan

    Irish nationalist writer Katharine Tynan was born in Clondalkin, a suburb of Dublin, in 1859. She was educated at the Dominican Convent of St. Catherine and started writing at a young age. Though Catholic,…
  • Author

    Charlotte Mew

    British writer Charlotte Mew was born in London in 1869 into a family of seven children; she was the eldest daughter. While she was still a child, three of her brothers died. Later, another brother and then…
  • Author

    Thomas Morris

    British Captain Thomas Morris was born in 1732 in Carlisle. He was educated at Winchester College and joined the British army in 1749. As a lieutenant, Morris was sent with the 17th Regiment to America in …
  • Author

    William Barnes

    Multitalented poet and autodidact William Barnes was born in Rushay, Dorset, in southern England. He worked as a clerk and a schoolmaster before earning a bachelor of divinity from Cambridge and becoming an…
  • Author

    Jean Ingelow

    Nineteenth century British poet, novelist, and chlidren’s author Jean Ingelow was born in Lincolnshire, England to a banker and his Scottish wife. The family moved to Ipswich and then London, where Ingelow…
  • Author

    William Ernest Henley

    Born in Gloucester, England, poet, editor, and critic William Ernest Henley was educated at Crypt Grammar School, where he studied with the poet T.E. Brown, and the University of St. Andrews. His father was…
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