Chapter 3 - Irish Rebellion on the Sensational Stage

Summary

The 1860s is a decade that, in many ways, marks the death of the Victorian era and the start of a long modernism. Certainly for British poetry, the 1860s marks a moment of historical retrospection, summation, and definition, and, simultaneously, the start of a new poetry of Why is this spelled out?modernity. The year 1861 marked Prince Albert’s death but also a landmark publication that is often overlooked because of ital its popular status: Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, which was to remain a definitive articulation of the lyric tradition in English poetry for at least a century. Yet the same decade also saw the publication (in 1866) of a volume of poetry that was crucial in opening the door to a new kind of poetry in English: Swinburne’s ital 1866 Poems and Ballads (First Series). This chapter explores the nature and importance of Palgrave’s historical anthology in counterpoint with the birth of a striking new aestheticist poetry.