By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Here’s a seemingly uncontroversial statement: in 1847, a novel called Jane Eyre was published; the author was Charlotte Brontë. One of the most famous things about Jane Eyre is that the male love interest, Mr Rochester, has locked his first wife, Bertha Mason, in the attic of his house.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde’s one novel, published originally in 1890 (as a serial) and then in book form the following year. The novel is at once an example of late Victorian Gothic horror and, in some ways, the greatest English-language novel about decadence and aestheticism, or ‘art for art’s sake’.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Dark House, by Which Once More I Stand’ is one canto (the seventh) from a much longer work of poetry, In Memoriam A. H. H. by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92). The poem shows Tennyson revisiting the home of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam, whose untimely death in 1833 inspired the poem. Before we proceed to offer an analysis of this section of the poem, here’s a reminder of the ‘Dark house’ canto.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The Princess, a long narrative poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson published in 1847, is not much read or studied now. In the vast editions of Tennyson’s collected works, it languishes unread alongside his plays about Thomas Becket and his various ‘sequel’ poems (‘Mariana in the South’, ‘Locksley Hall Sixty Years After’), although it did go on to inspire Princess Ida by the Savoy opera composers, Gilbert and Sullivan.
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was one of the most technically accomplished poets of the Victorian age. But as well as the sheer range of forms he mastered, there is the daring subject matter he sometimes wrote about. (He was also a colourful figure, known for his saucy private life as much as for his poetry, and tales of his naked sliding down banisters are well-known.) Below, we introduce ten of Swinburne’s greatest poems, showcasing the full range of his talents.