Précis Reviews

Cronin, Richard, Alison Chapman, Antony H. Harrison, eds. A Companion to Victorian Poetry. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. xiv + 602 pp. $45.00

Hail to the paperback version from Blackwell, which is nicely affordable for the wealth of insights contained therein. After a handy chronology, this book is separated into three general parts: part one focuses on “Variety and Forms,” part two on “Production, Distribution, and Reception,” and part three addresses “Victorian Poetry and Victorian Culture.” Do not be fooled by the generic titles, however. Along with information that is helpful to the student of the Victorian Era (for example, the importance of the epic genre or the influence of medievalism), this collection of essays delves into the more esoteric. Cronin’s essay on the Spasmodics is not only enlightening as Cronin explains how the little-known poets influenced Victorian greats such as Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Arnold, but also amusing with ironic wit: “The Spasmodic poets are no longer read,” and their “verse characteristically trembles on the edge of self-parody.” Part two contains some fresh research about “Anthologies and the Making of the Poetic Canon,” “The Market,” an essay about reviewing, and an especially convincing essay by Lorraine Janzen Kooistra describing the influence of the Victorian illustration on the popularity of Victorian verse. Kooistra amply illustrates her arguments with many engraved plates—particularly of interest to our readers is the change from the giftbook or parlorbook type of illustration to the Rossetti plates and the Decadent fin-de-siècle engravings for Oscar Wilde. The Companion includes a chapter on the Pre-Raphaelite School and an essay on “The Poetry of the 1890s,” in which Chris Snodgrass takes pains to “demythologize” the “ misconception” that the 1890s was like “the autumnal dregs of a seasonal cycle,” according to Snodgrass one of the most tenaciously held ideas of Decadence that “continues to transfix the historical imagination.” The final third of the book is very comprehensive and begins by focusing on Victorian poetry and a sense of nationhood, continuing on into poetry and religion, poetic vision, poetry and science, and “Landscape and “Cityscape.” The collection culminates with an essay by Julia F. Saville on marriage and gender (containing tantalizing subheadings such as “Uxorious Husbands and Adulterous Wives”) and the final humorously written essay by John Maynard about sexuality and love: “If everybody was not doing it at least everyone was talking about doing it; and if they talked about not doing it, they were still talking about it.” Well worth the forty-five bucks, this Companion will not sit on the shelf and collect dust, but be useful for both scholarly and entertaining reading.

Levine, George. How to Read the Victorian Novel. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. x + 173 pp. $74.95

“These are strange and powerful books we are dealing with,” Levine asserts, intending to draw us away from what he claims is a stereotypical concept of the Victorian novel as staid, comforting, and above all easy to read. Of course, Victorian scholars are well aware of the levels of depth buried in the often lengthy and supposedly “baggy” triple-decker. Levine sets out to inspect these novels with “fresh eyes” in order to discover from their conventional appearance some “dangerously disruptive questions.” That is not to say that the novels do not have some family resemblance. Levine points out that we are dealing with books labeled “Victorian” that are often worlds apart (consider Oliver Twist, 1837, and Kipling’s Kim, 1901)—“geographically, chronologically,” but, Levine adds his caveat, “not entirely technically.” What, then, are the connections among these seemingly disparate novels? How are they distinctive? For the student of the Victorian novel, and also as a teaching tool, Levine’s lengthy chapter one is quite helpful in sorting out some family traits. Some widely shared assumptions include a self-conscious reference to time and transition (consider the importance of the railroad throughout many novels); a historical setting (Napoleonic Era in Vanity Fair); interest in class and vocation (“There are virtually no Victorian novels that do not imply the fundamental importance of class and do not make class a personal matter,” asserts Levine...