The first volume of The Letters of Alfred Lord Tennyson showed the young manbecoming a poet and recorded the experiences--out of which so much of his poetrywas forged--that culminated in three personal triumphs: marriage, In Memoriam,and the Poet Laureateship. Volume IIreveals the gradual emergence of a new anddifferent Tennyson, moving confidentlyamong the great and famous--the intellectual, political, and artistic elite--yetremaining very much a son of Lincolnshire,whose childlike simplicity of manner strikesall who meet him. As a young man, he wasobliged to be paterfamilias of his father'sfamily; now he has a family of his own,with two sons reaching manhood, twohouses, and two lives, one in London andthe other at home. Through the letters we learn somethingabout his poetry (including "Maud," andThe Idylls of the King), much abouthis dealings with publishers, and evenmore about his travels--in Scotland,Wales, Cornwall, Norway, Switzerland,Auvergne, Brittany, the Pyrenees--and itis clear that all that he met became part ofhim and of his poetry. By the close of thisvolume he is one of the two or three mostfamous names in the English-speakingliterary world. The edition includes an abundance of letters to and about Tennyson as well as byhim, and its generous annotation has beencommended by reviewers for its range andwit.

Volume II reveals the gradual emergence of a new and different Tennyson, moving confidently among the great and famous, yet remaining very much a son of Lincolnshire. Through the letters we learn something about his poetry, much about his dealings with publishers, and even more about his travels; and it is clear that all that he met became part of him and of his poetry.

Despite meter's recasting as a rigid metronome, diverse modern poet-critics refused the formal ideologies of free verse through complex engagements with traditional versification. In the twentieth century, meter became an object of disdain, reimagined as an automated metronome to be transcended by new rhythmic practices of free verse. Yet meter remained in the archives, poems, letters, and pedagogy of modern poets and critics. In Modernism's Metronome, Ben Glaser revisits early twentieth-century poetics to uncover a wide range of metrical practice and theory, upending our inherited story about the "breaking" of meter and rise of free verse.

Combining historical study, theorization, and experimental fiction, this book takes commodity culture and book retail around 1900 as the prime example of a market of symbolic goods. With the port of Southampton, England, as his case study, Simon R. Frost reveals how the city's bookshops, with their combinations of libraries, haberdashery, stationery, and books, sustained and were sustained by the dreams of ordinary readers, and how together they created the values powering this market. The goods in this market were symbolic and were not "consumed" but read. Their readings were created between other readers and texts, in happy disobedience to the neoliberal laws of the free market. Today such reader-created social markets comprise much of the world's branded economies, which is why Frost calls for a new understanding of both literary and market values.

This book shows how prose writers in the Victorian period grappled with the sea as a setting, a shaper of plot and character, as a structuring motif, and as a source of metaphor.

The story of a remarkable woman who wrote a novel that not only became a classic, but also changed the way human society views and treats animals. Born in 1829 to a young Quaker couple, Anna Sewell grew up in poverty in London. She was fourteen when she fell and injured her ankle, which left her permanently disabled. Rejecting the life of a Victorian invalid, she developed an extraordinary empathy with horses, learning to ride side-saddle and to drive a small carriage. Rebellious and independent-minded, Anna suffered periods of severe depression as a young woman. She left the Quaker movement, but remained close friends with the women writers and abolitionists who had been empowered by its liberal principles. It was not until she became terminally ill, aged 51, that she found the courage to write her own book. Tragically, she died just five months after the book was published in 1877. Black Beauty is now recognised as the first anthropomorphic novel, and it had an extraordinary emotional impact on readers of all ages. After modest success in Britain, it was taken up by a charismatic American, George Thorndike Angell, a campaigner against animal cruelty who made it one of the bestselling novels of all time. Using newly discovered archive material, Celia Brayfield shows Anna Sewell developing the extraordinary resilience to overcome her disability, rouse the conscience of Victorian Britain and make her mark upon the world.