Working-Class Women Poets in Victorian Britain: An Anthology

This unique new anthology brings to light a selection of previously unpublished poetry by working-class women of the Victorian era.

“Florence Boos has produced a fascinating anthology and a learned interpretive study in one volume. Boos is passionate in her claims for the social life of poetry and careful in her presentation of individuality of each of these writing women. The poems include political ballads, personal lyrics, and selections of prose that often give insights into what poetic vocation meant to working women. Boos provides excellent introductions to each poet. This is a beautiful labor of love, and will delight scholars, general readers, and poets.” — Anne Janowitz, Queen Mary University of London

“This anthology is essential reading for anyone concerned with women’s writing. The work of these indomitable women shows human determination at its strongest and most moving. These poets elegize the tragic deaths of their children, celebrate the beauties of the natural world, and deplore war and injustice. Hampered by neglected or interrupted education and often dogged by poverty, they overcome their disadvantages with great dignity. We should read them now and give them the praise they deserve.” — Dorothy McMillan, University of Glasgow

Though working-class women in the nineteenth century included many accomplished and prolific poets, their work has often been neglected by critics and readers in favour of comparable work by men. Questioning the assumption that few poems by working-class women had survived, Florence Boos set out to discover supposedly lost works in libraries, private collections, and archives. Her years of research resulted in this anthology.

Working-Class Women Poets in Victorian Britain features poetry from a variety of women, including an itinerant weaver, a rural midwife, a factory worker protesting industrialization, and a blind Scottish poet who wrote in both the Scots dialect and English. In addition to biographical information and contemporary reviews of the poets’ work, the anthology also includes several photographs of the poets, their environment, and the journals in which their poems appeared.

• | Author: Florence S. Boos
• | Publisher: Broadview Press Ltd
• | Publication Date: Jun 12, 2008
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Paperback / softback
• | ISBN-13: 9781551115962
• | ISBN-10: 1551115964