Richard Cronin is emeritus professor 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 (2002), A Companion to Victorian Poetry (co-edited with Antony H. Harrison and Alison Chapman, Wiley Blackwell, 2002, 2007), Paper Pellets: British Literary Culture after Waterloo (2010), and the 21st-Century Oxford Authors’ Robert Browning (co-edited with Dorothy McMillan, 2015).

• Acknowledgments ix 1 Introduction: The Victorian Poetry Palace 12 The Divided Self and the Dramatic Monologue 273 Victorian Metrics 654 Short Poems, Long Poems and the Victorian Sonnet Sequence 895 Victorian Poetry and Translation 1146 Victorian Poetry and Life 1417 Poetry and Religion 1748 Conclusion: The 1890s 196Bibliography 220Index 229

“Richard Cronin’s exceptionally fine book carries out just what its title promises – reading. The pleasure of his adroit, meticulously imaginative insights into verbal and metrical effects is constant … One of the best general readings of Victorian poetry in the last ten years.” Victorian Studies“Reading Victorian Poetry will make an excellent introduction to Victorian poetry and gives a good account of a number of key issues.” English Studies“[A] compelling new critical survey of the period’s poems … Cronin’s deft close readings enable … shifts and juxtapositions, and the assured breadth of his knowledge and reference … It is a definite strength of Cronin’s approach that his own book’s attempt to recover ways of appreciating and understanding Victorian poetry overlaps with the techniques Victorian poets themselves used to address and forestall their anxieties about the meaning and value of their work. [It] proves to be a good way of tuning in to the distinctive music of the Victorian poem.” The Tennyson Society