Victorian Poetry is a major re-evaluation of the genre by one of the foremost scholars of the period. In a work that is uniquely comprehensive, Isobel Armstrong demonstrates the sophistication of Victorian poetry and rescues it from its longstanding image as a moralised form of romantic verse'. For the first time, familiar middle-class male poets, such as Tennyson, Swinburne, Hopkins and Browning, are related to female and working-class poets. For the first time also, the aesthetics and politics of Victorian poetry, both conservative and radical, are brought together in a sustained historical discussion. Armstrong's analysis is theoretically astute and challenges some of the major issues in contemporary criticism in a way that is clear and unassuming. Re-reading Victorian poetry from the midst of contemporary literary criticism, this volume constitutes a landmark in the appreciation and understanding of Victorian literature.