Laurel · Every poet, by period

Victorian

1837–1901 · 95 poets · 233,004 lines

Victorian poetry inherited Romantic ambition and industrial doubt. Tennyson made the music of the language more exact than anyone before him; Browning made the dramatic monologue his instrument, a poem spoken by someone you learn to distrust; Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti wrote the century's best sonnets and its strangest fairy tale. Arnold measured the loss of faith on a beach at Dover.

Late in the century the forms loosened and tightened at once. Hopkins's sprung rhythm counts stresses and lets the syllables fall where they may; Swinburne pushed the anapaest to its limit; Housman went back to the ballad quatrain; Hardy roughened the line on purpose; Kipling put the music-hall song to work. Lear from the 1840s, and Carroll after him, made nonsense verse an English art. Wilde's ballad, written after his release from Reading Gaol, closes the century.

  1. Alfred Tennyson 1809–1892In Memoriam A.H.H.Idylls of the KingThe Early PoemsPoems
  2. Robert Browning 1812–1889Dramatic LyricsMen and Women
  3. Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806–1861Sonnets from the Portuguese
  4. Christina Rossetti 1830–1894Goblin Market and Other Poems
  5. Gerard Manley Hopkins 1844–1889Poems
  6. Oscar Wilde 1854–1900The Ballad of Reading Gaol
  7. Rudyard Kipling 1865–1936Barrack-Room BalladsVerses 1889–1896
  8. Thomas Hardy 1840–1928Wessex Poems and Other VersesPoems of the Past and the Present
  9. Matthew Arnold 1822–1888Poems
  10. Lewis Carroll 1832–1898The Hunting of the SnarkThrough the Looking-Glass
  11. Robert Louis Stevenson 1850–1894A Child's Garden of Verses
  12. Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë 1816–1855Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
  13. George Meredith 1828–1909Poems, Volume I
  14. A. E. Housman 1859–1936A Shropshire Lad
  15. Edward Lear 1812–1888A Book of NonsenseNonsense Songs
  16. W. S. Gilbert 1836–1911The Bab Ballads
  17. Algernon Charles Swinburne 1837–1909Poems and Ballads
  18. Arthur Hugh Clough 1819–1861Amours de Voyage
  19. Robert Bridges 1844–1930Poetical Works
  20. Ernest Dowson 1867–1900The Poems of Ernest Dowson
  21. Francis Thompson 1859–1907Poems (1893)
  22. William Morris 1834–1896The Defence of Guenevere
  23. William Barnes 1801–1886Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect
  24. W. E. Henley 1849–1903Poems
  25. Coventry Patmore 1823–1896The Angel in the House
  26. Alice Meynell 1847–1922Poems
  27. Jean Ingelow 1820–1897Poems, Volume I
  28. Lionel Johnson 1867–1902Poems
  29. Arthur Quiller-Couch 1863–1944The Oxford Book of Ballads
  30. Edmund Clarence Stedman 1833–1908The Poetical Works of Edmund Clarence Stedman
  31. Isabella Valancy Crawford 1850–1887Old Spookses' Pass, Malcolm's Katie and Other Poems
  32. William Makepeace Thackeray 1811–1863Ballads
  33. Eleanor Hull 1860–1935The Poem-Book of the Gael
  34. Madison Julius Cawein 1865–1914Poems
  35. William Watson 1858–1935The Poems of William Watson
  36. Bliss Carman 1861–1929Later Poems
  37. Francis James Child 1825–1896English and Scottish Ballads, Volume I
  38. Henry Timrod 1828–1867Poems
  39. Henry John Newbolt 1862–1938Poems: New and Old
  40. William Edmondstoune Aytoun 1813–1865Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers
  41. John Addington Symonds 1840–1893Wine, Women and Song
  42. Eugene Field 1850–1895Hoosier Lyrics
  43. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper 1825–1911Poems
  44. Edwin Markham 1852–1940Lincoln and Other Poems
  45. Archibald Lampman 1861–1899Lyrics of Earth
  46. Louise Imogen Guiney 1861–1920Songs at the Start
  47. Thomas Bailey Aldrich 1836–1907The Sisters' Tragedy, with Other Poems
  48. Paul Verlaine 1844–1896Poems
  49. Charles G. D. Roberts 1860–1943New Poems
  50. Sydney Dobell 1824–1874Poems
  51. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt 1840Poems
  52. Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, Earl of Lytton 1831–1892Poems
  53. Edward Fitzgerald 1809–1883Poems
  54. Arthur William Edgar O’shaughnessy 1844–1881Poems
  55. Alexander Smith 1829–1867Poems
  56. Francis Mahony 1805–1866Poems
  57. Helen Selina, Lady Dufferin 1807–1867Poems
  58. Roden Berkeley Wriothesley Noel 1834–1894Poems
  59. John Davidson 1857–1909Poems
  60. Theodore Watts-dunton 1836–1914Poems
  61. Sir Samuel Ferguson 1810–1886Poems
  62. William Allingham 1824–1889Poems
  63. William Brighty Rands 1823–1880Poems
  64. Henry Clarence Kendall 1841–1882Poems
  65. Henry Charles Beeching 1859–1919Poems
  66. Thomas Edward Brown 1830–1897Poems
  67. John Todhunter 1839–1916Poems
  68. Henry Austin Dobson 1840Poems
  69. Aubrey de Vere 1814–1902Poems
  70. Charles Kingsley 1819–1875Poems
  71. William Philpot 1823–1889Poems
  72. William (johnson) Cory 1823–1892Poems
  73. Edmund Gosse 1849Poems
  74. George William Russell 1853Poems
  75. Ebenezer Jones 1820–1860Poems
  76. Thomas Ashe 1836–1889Poems
  77. Douglas Hyde 1861Poems
  78. Frederick Locker-lampson 1821–1895Poems
  79. Bret Harte 1839–1902Poems
  80. Katharine Tynan Hinkson 1861Poems
  81. T. W. Rolleston 1857Poems
  82. Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton 1808–1876Poems
  83. Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton 1809–1885Poems
  84. Henry Cust 1861–1917Poems
  85. George Fox 1815Poems
  86. R. D. Blackmore 1825–1900Poems
  87. Arthur Christopher Benson 1862Poems
  88. Thomas Wade 1805–1875Poems
  89. Charles Tennyson Turner 1808–1879Poems
  90. Henry Alford 1810–1871Poems
  91. Andrew Lang 1844–1912Poems
  92. Gilbert Parker 1862Poems
  93. Margaret L. Woods 1856Poems
  94. George Mac Donald 1824–1905Poems
  95. William Dean Howells 1837Poems

The periods are the ones the history track uses; a poet named in a period's own list belongs to it whatever the dates say.