Conclusion: Where Do We Go From Here?

The final chapter in the book reiterates the message of the book as a whole—the poetry of the periodical press is the poetry of the Victorian period. It suggests that one way forward is through the digital humanities and outlines a number of influential digital projects, including the Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry Project (formerly the Database of Victorian Periodical Poetry) and the Periodical Poetry Index, that facilitate the study of periodical poetry, inserting such poetry back into the bibliographic record. This chapter concludes with a reflection on the study of periodical poetry, noting that its future most likely lies in a combination of archival research and the output created by digital tools.

Devotional Reading and Popular Poetry in Good Words

Focusing on Good Words as a representative example of the religious literary periodical, this chapter argues that the debut of Good Words in 1860 marks the rise of a different kind of religious periodical based on the literary models provided by the weeklies and monthlies discussed in the previous chapters. In particular, it considers how the devotional poetry published in Good Words promoted devotional reading practices, setting the periodical apart from its direct competitors, All the Year Round and the Cornhill. The first half of the chapter focuses on the form of the periodical’s devotional poetry, including a discussion of parables and hymns. The second half discusses how the periodical’s illustrations contribute to the self-reflexive, affective, and often devotional nature of the monthly’s poetry, creating a space for Christian contemplation within the busy pages of the periodical press.

The New Shilling Monthlies: Macmillan’s Magazine and The Cornhill

This chapter turns its attention to the shilling monthly as represented by the originators of the genre: Macmillan’s Magazine and the Cornhill. These periodicals represent a particular moment in literary history in which the shilling monthly explicitly functioned to reinforce and define middle-class cultural tastes and traditions. This chapter thus considers how the editors of Macmillan’s and the Cornhill used poetry to support the cultural and literary aims of their respective periodicals, shaping the poetic landscape of the 1860s through their editorial decisions (e.g. each periodical took a side in the era’s debate over hexameters). The first third of the chapter traces Alexander Macmillan’s influence on the poetry of Macmillan’s through the work of Alfred Tennyson, Dinah Mulock Craik, and Christina Rossetti. The remainder of the chapter focuses on William Thackeray’s role as paterfamilias of the Cornhill through an examination of poems by Matthew Arnold, Adelaide Anne Procter, Owen Meredith, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (among others).

Middle-Class Audiences, Literary Weeklies and the Inaugural Poem: Household Words, All the Year Round and Once a Week

Focusing on the poetry published in the inaugural issues of Household Words, All the Year Round and Once a Week, this chapter considers how reading poetry across periodical titles raises fruitful questions about the nature of periodical poetry and its role in the press, establishing the principles and terminology that will guide the analysis of periodical poetry in the following chapters. The first two sections of the chapter focus on the concept of the inaugural poem, using the poetry of Charles Dickens’s Household Words as a case study. The latter half of the chapter examines the use of inaugural poetry in the periodicals that grew out of and in opposition to Household Words, which ceased publication in 1859 due to Dickens’s feud with his publishers Bradbury and Evans. In particular, the chapter traces how Dickens used poetry to establish continuity between Household Words and All the Year Round while the proprietors of Once a Week (Bradbury and Evans) distinguished their weekly from Dickens’s through illustrated poetry. This close examination of the era’s competing weeklies ultimately demonstrates the importance of poetry to the development of a periodical’s brand identity.

The Poetics of Popular Poetry in the Argosy

This chapter focuses on the poetics of popular poetry in the Argosy under the editorship of Isa Craig. It argues that a careful reading of the periodical’s sentimental poetry challenges the critical dismissal of such light, entertaining verse as simplistic, marginal, and trite. In particular, it considers how the periodical poems of Christina Rossetti, Isa Craig, Jean Ingelow and Sarah Williams test as well as champion the conventions of the sentimental lyric form to produce a new poetics, one defined both through and against conventional representations of the Victorian poetess and her gushing, heart-inspired poetry. Ultimately, this chapter suggests that evaluating the poems of the Argosy on their own merits as poetic forms produced as part of the era’s complex, interconnected literary culture provides a way to discuss sentimental poetry and female poets without falling back on the defensive and sometimes dismissive language found in much of the critical work published on women’s popular poetry.

Introduction: Poetry, Popularity and the Periodical Press

Using the publication of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘L. E. L.’s Last Question’ in the Ladies’ Pocket Magazine as a case study, this chapter establishes the central premise of the book: periodical contexts are crucial to the study of Victorian poetry and poetics. From there, it provides an overview of recent work on periodical culture and poetry, including that by Kirstie Blair, Natalie Houston, Linda Hughes, Kathryn Ledbetter, and Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, as well as theories of cultural production and form, focusing on Pierre Bourdieu’s notions of cultural capital and middlebrow culture, and Caroline Levine’s recent work on form and its affordances.