Laurel · Every poet, by period

Victorian

1837–1901 · 127 poets · 374,608 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 Princess: A MedleyMaud, and Other PoemsThe Early Poems
  2. Robert Browning 1812–1889Dramatic LyricsMen and WomenSelections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning
  3. Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806–1861Sonnets from the PortugueseLady Geraldine's Courtship, and Other Poems
  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 1865–1936The Five Nations, Volume IISongs from BooksThe Five Nations, Volume IBarrack-Room BalladsVerses 1889–1896
  8. Thomas Hardy 1840–1928Wessex Poems and Other VersesMoments of Vision and Miscellaneous VersesSatires of Circumstance, Lyrics and ReveriesPoems 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 1828–1909Modern Love, and Other Poems
  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 1844–1930The Growth of Love, and Other Poems
  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 1820–1897Divided, and Other Poems
  28. Lionel Johnson 1867–1902Poems
  29. Arthur Quiller-Couch 1863–1944The Oxford Book of Ballads
  30. George MacDonald 1824–1905A Microcosm in Terza Rima, and Other Poems
  31. Nikolai Nekrasov 1821–1878Who Can Be Happy and Free in Russia?
  32. Henry Van Dyke 1852–1933The Poems of Henry Van Dyke
  33. Edmund Clarence Stedman 1833–1908The Blameless Prince, and Other Poems
  34. Mary E. Burt 1850–1918Poems Every Child Should Know
  35. Bliss Carman 1861–1929More Songs from VagabondiaLater Poems
  36. Ambrose Bierce 1842–1914Shapes of Clay
  37. Isabella Valancy Crawford 1850–1887Old Spookses' Pass, Malcolm's Katie and Other Poems
  38. William Makepeace Thackeray 1811–1863Ballads
  39. Eleanor Hull 1860–1935The Poem-Book of the Gael
  40. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson 1832–1910Poems and Songs
  41. Eugene Field 1850–1895Hoosier LyricsA Little Book of Western Verse
  42. Madison Julius Cawein 1865–1914Poems
  43. William Watson 1858–1935The Poems of William Watson
  44. George Eliot 1819–1880The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems
  45. Francis James Child 1825–1896English and Scottish Ballads, Volume I
  46. Henry Timrod 1828–1867Poems
  47. Susan Coolidge 1835–1905A Few More Verses
  48. Adelaide Anne Procter 1825–1864Legends and Lyrics: Second Series
  49. Henry John Newbolt 1862–1938Poems: New and Old
  50. J. G. Holland 1819–1881Bitter-Sweet
  51. John Hay 1838–1905Pike County Ballads and Other Poems
  52. Sándor Petőfi 1823–1849Translations from Alexander Petofi, the Magyar Poet
  53. Laurence Hope 1865–1904India's Love Lyrics
  54. Edwin Markham 1852–1940The Man with the Hoe, and Other PoemsLincoln and Other Poems
  55. William Edmondstoune Aytoun 1813–1865Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers
  56. John Addington Symonds 1840–1893Wine, Women and Song
  57. Thomas Gordon Hake 1809–1895Poems
  58. Théophile Gautier 1811–1872Enamels and Cameos and Other Poems
  59. Rabindranath Tagore 1861–1941Gitanjali (Song Offerings)The Gardener
  60. Ella Wheeler Wilcox 1850–1919Poems of Passion
  61. George Santayana 1863–1952Poems
  62. Helen Gray Cone 1859–1934A Chant of Love for England, and Other Poems
  63. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper 1825–1911Poems
  64. Oliver Herford 1863–1935The Bashful Earthquake, and Other Fables and Verses
  65. Will Carleton 1845–1912Farm Ballads
  66. Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828–1882The House of LifeThe Blessed Damozel
  67. Edith Wharton 1862–1937Artemis to Actaeon, and Other Verse
  68. Giosuè Carducci 1835–1907Poems of Giosuè Carducci
  69. Archibald Lampman 1861–1899Lyrics of Earth
  70. Louise Imogen Guiney 1861–1920Songs at the Start
  71. Harriet Beecher Stowe 1811–1896Religious Poems
  72. Mikhail Lermontov 1814–1841The Demon
  73. Thomas Bailey Aldrich 1836–1907The Sisters' Tragedy, with Other Poems
  74. Paul Verlaine 1844–1896Poems
  75. Charles Baudelaire 1821–1867The Flowers of Evil
  76. Amy Levy 1861–1889A London Plane-Tree, and Other Verse
  77. Various Ballads and Lyrics of Old France
  78. Violet Jacob 1863–1946Bonnie Joann, and Other Poems
  79. Charles G. D. Roberts 1860–1943New Poems
  80. Sydney Dobell 1824–1874Poems
  81. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt 1840Poems
  82. Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, Earl of Lytton 1831–1892Poems
  83. Helen Hunt Jackson 1830–1885A Calendar of Sonnets
  84. Thomas Buchanan Read 1822–1872Poems
  85. Edward Fitzgerald 1809–1883Poems
  86. Arthur William Edgar O’shaughnessy 1844–1881Poems
  87. Alexander Smith 1829–1867Poems
  88. Francis Mahony 1805–1866Poems
  89. Helen Selina, Lady Dufferin 1807–1867Poems
  90. Roden Berkeley Wriothesley Noel 1834–1894Poems
  91. John Davidson 1857–1909Poems
  92. Theodore Watts-dunton 1836–1914Poems
  93. Sir Samuel Ferguson 1810–1886Poems
  94. William Allingham 1824–1889Poems
  95. William Brighty Rands 1823–1880Poems
  96. Henry Clarence Kendall 1841–1882Poems
  97. Henry Charles Beeching 1859–1919Poems
  98. Thomas Edward Brown 1830–1897Poems
  99. John Todhunter 1839–1916Poems
  100. Henry Austin Dobson 1840Poems
  101. Aubrey de Vere 1814–1902Poems
  102. Charles Kingsley 1819–1875Poems
  103. William Philpot 1823–1889Poems
  104. William (johnson) Cory 1823–1892Poems
  105. Edmund Gosse 1849Poems
  106. George William Russell 1853Poems
  107. Ebenezer Jones 1820–1860Poems
  108. Thomas Ashe 1836–1889Poems
  109. Douglas Hyde 1861Poems
  110. Frederick Locker-lampson 1821–1895Poems
  111. Bret Harte 1839–1902Poems
  112. Katharine Tynan Hinkson 1861Poems
  113. T. W. Rolleston 1857Poems
  114. Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton 1808–1876Poems
  115. Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton 1809–1885Poems
  116. Henry Cust 1861–1917Poems
  117. George Fox 1815Poems
  118. R. D. Blackmore 1825–1900Poems
  119. Arthur Christopher Benson 1862Poems
  120. Thomas Wade 1805–1875Poems
  121. Charles Tennyson Turner 1808–1879Poems
  122. Henry Alford 1810–1871Poems
  123. Andrew Lang 1844–1912Poems
  124. Gilbert Parker 1862Poems
  125. Margaret L. Woods 1856Poems
  126. George Mac Donald 1824–1905Poems
  127. 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.