Victorian Poetry Spring 2019 Dashboard
Description
Students in Dr. Joshua King's Victorian Poetry (Spring 2019) seminar are doing original research on rare items at the Armstrong Browning Library related to poets and poetry on the course syllabus. In addition to blog posts on rare items that will be published separately on the 19CRS website (blogs.baylor.edu/19CRS/), students will contribute entries related to their projects to a shared class timeline and map.
Galleries, Timelines, and Maps
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Individual Entries
In 1859, the fourth edition of Aurora Leigh, written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was published in the city of London, United Kingdom. This was the final edition that was publically published before Browning passed away in 1861 in Florence, Italy. While Browning's final edition of this poem was published here, London is also the meeting-place of Browning and famous literary figures such as William Wordsworth and Mary Russell Mitford through John Kenyon. Mitford would later become Browning's close friend and confidant, discussing her works in enitrety, including Aurora Leigh. This relationship with another female literary figure in society is relevant to this poem because it discusses women's rights through the female characters, Aurora and Marian. In Mitford, Browning found a female friend whose opinion she could seek about her works that included themes of gender equality and oppression.
Tennyson began attending Trinity College in Cambridge in 1827. This was the same year he published his first book of poetry, Poems by Two Brothers. At Trinity College he joined an undergraduate literery group called the "Apostles," who encouraged him to continue his poetic career. His time there became significant to his life not only because of the dedication to poetry he acquired there, but also because this is the place where he met Arthur Hallam. Hallam's death in 1833 was a pivotal, traumatic moment in Tennyson's life. It crushed him deeply and became the cause of many of his emotional issues. However, this emotional pain also heavily influenced his poetry later on. After Hallam's death, Tennyson wrote an elegy for his beloved friend and hid himself from society for ten years. This became known as the "Ten Years Silence," where he would dedicate his time to grieving and revising his poorly reviewed publication of Poems. It was not until 1842...
moreRobert Browning along with his wife Elizabeth are living in Florence at the time. Robert is walking among the various vendors in the piazza and stumbles on The Old Yellow Book. The book records a sensational murder trial in Rome between January-February of 1698. Characteristically of Robert, he is drawn and intrigued by this story of criminal properties. The mind of a criminal enthralls Robert. Interestingly, one hundred and sixty-two years pass between the Franceschini trial and Browning finding of The Old Yellow Book. He becomes captivated by the challenge of recreating the events involving Count Guido Franceschini and his wife Pompillia Camparinii, which once shook the city of Rome. He frequently indulged his imagination and would express to Elizabeth and their friends his want to recreate the infamous murder of Pompillia in the poetic form. Shockingly, EBB did not believe Robert should concentrate on The Old Yellow Book, but after her death in June...
moreChristina Rossetti wrote "From the Antique" in London, England after returning there with her mother from Frome in Somerset, England. In Frome she had been keeping up a school with her mother. In 1854 she returned to London where she cared for her ill father, who shortly died in April 1854. Though the poem probably reflects her own grief at being a woman in her time period, one could see how the grief of losing her father might have been an influence on her desolation. In the poem, a woman wonders whether, if she were to disappear from the world herself, anybody would miss her, or if the world would go on the same. This begs the question: did Rossetti herself suspect that, in her role as a woman, her life was not as valuable as her father's—and, therefore, that her death would be just as insignificant? It is impossible to know this now, however, we do know that returning to England to care for her dying father most certainly had an impact on Rossetti both as a person, and as a...
moreBrowning was born in a suburb of London in 1812 and wrote many of his early works in the city. One notable poem, “Porphyria”, was originally published in the January 1836 edition of The Monthly Repository. In 1842, he published an edited version of “Porphyria” under the title “Madhouse Cells” in Bells and Pomegranates. Both The Monthly Repository and Bells and Pomegranates were publications based in London. However, from 1846 to 1861, while living in Italy, Browning made no recorded edits to “Porphyria”. Interestingly, in 1863, just two years after moving back to London, Browning wrote a fair copy edition titled, “Porphyria’s Lover”, noting at the bottom of the page that the edition was written in London. The connection between these changes to “Porphyria” and the city of London suggests Browning may have found inspiration in London when composing and editing "Porphyria".
Illustrator Clarkson Stanfield's first major voyage was to Whampoa (Huangpu), China in 1815. It has been said that Stanfield's depictions of ships, the ocean, and other travel-related subjects give his viewers heightened knowledge of these topics because they were so accurate. This voyage was the first of many from which he came back with many sketches, and it is also where his talents were first noticed. Stanfield's heightened knowledge of ships and voyages is the main reason he was chosen to illustrate for Tennyson's "Ulysses" in the 1857 illustrated edition of Tennyson's Poems, and this voyage to China is the first thing that got his talent noticed and sought after.