‘Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister’ is one of Robert Browning’s most celebrated dramatic monologues: it first appeared in Browning’s 1842 collection Dramatic Lyrics. As ‘Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister’ is a relatively long poem, perhaps the best way to offer an analysis of the poem is by going through it, […]
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 […]
Selected by Dr Oliver Tearle The Brontë sisters are best-known as novelists: Emily gave us Wuthering Heights, Anne wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and Charlotte offered Jane Eyre. But from a very young age, before they penned some of the greatest novels of the Victorian era, Currer, Ellis, and […]
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61) is less famous now as a poet in her own right, and more familiar as the wife of Robert Browning, whom she courted through a series of extraordinary love letters in the 1840s. It was not always this way. Once upon a time, Robert Browning was […]
On one of Hardy’s best-known poems – analysed by Dr Oliver Tearle Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was a prolific poet, with his Complete Poems running to 1,000 pages. Yet he’s not generally known for being a satirical poet. ‘The Ruined Maid’, one of his earliest and best-known poems, is a rare […]