Working Verse in Victorian Scotland: Poetry, Press, Community

This volume reassesses working-class poetry and poetics in Victorian Britain, using Scotland as a focus and with particular attention to the role of the popular press in fostering and disseminating working-class verse cultures. It studies a very wide variety of writers who are unknown to scholarship, and assesses the political, social, and cultural work which their poetry performed.

During the Victorian period, Scotland underwent unprecedented changes in terms of industrialization, the rise of the city, migration, and emigration. This study shows how poets who defined themselves as part of a specifically Scottish tradition responded to these changes. It substantially revises our understanding of Scottish literature in this period, while contributing to wider investigations of the role of popular verse in national and international cultures.


Author: Kirstie Blair
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 08/19/2019
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780198843795

Review Citation(s):
Choice 06/01/2021

About the Author

Kirstie Blair, Chair in English Studies, University of Strathclyde

Kirstie Blair holds a Chair in English Studies at the University of Strathclyde. She previously worked at the universities of Stirling, Glasgow, and Oxford. She is author of two monographs on Victorian poetry, both published with Oxford University Press, and a wide selection of articles and book
chapters, largely focused on aspects of Victorian literature and culture. She recently published an anthology of working-class newspaper verse, The Poets of the People's Journal, with the Association for Scottish Literary Studies. From 2018 to 2021, Professor Blair is Principal Investigator on the
AHRC-funded project 'Piston, Pen & Press: Literary Cultures in the Industrial Workplace.' She is also the current Director and the founder of the collaborative Scottish Centre for Victorian and Neo-Victorian Studies.

This title is not returnable