"Dover Beach" is the most celebrated poem by Matthew Arnold (1822 – 1888), a writer and educator of the Victorian era. It was first published in 1867, though it is generally believed to have been written around Matthew Arnold's honeymoon in 1851. Among the prominent Victorian writers, Matthew Arnold is distinctive in that his reputation rests equally upon his poetry and criticism. While only a quarter of his productive life was given to writing poetry, many of the same values, attitudes, and feelings expressed in his poems achieve a more balanced formulation in his prose. This unity was obscured for most earlier readers by the usual evaluations of his poetry as ambiguous and often satirically witty in its self-imposed task of illuminating the social consciousness of England. "Dover Beach" is a stand-out poem in the Victorian canon and is often claimed to be the greatest poem of the era. The main reason is that it differs from the poetry of its day. Other Victorian poets like Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning wrote with strict formality. While Arnold's other poetry is similar to theirs, this poem stands out in its refusal to settle down into a reliable pattern, which is why it is a forerunner to literary movements of the 20th century.

Further Reading Suggestions:

Epstein, Joseph. "Matthew Arnold and the Resistance." Commentary 73.4 (1982): 53.

Gottfried, Leon. Matthew Arnold and the Romantics. Routledge, 2016.

Larracey, Caitlin. "Carlyle, Arnold, and Wilde: Art and the Departure from Humanism to Aestheticism in the Victorian Era."

Undergraduate Review 8.1 (2012): 102-107