Selected Poems

This volume presents a selection of Arthur Hugh Clough’s poetry (1819-1861). Each poem is accompanied by detailed annotation which provides the modern reader with the intellectual, cultural, and historical information necessary for a full appreciation of the poet’s work. A substantial critical introduction analyses the major themes and stylistic features of Clough’s poetry, and attempts to place his work in the context of nineteenth-century poetry as a whole. The poems discussed span Clough’s entire career, with new texts provided for all posthumously published works. The main focus of the book is on two of his most important poems, Amours de Voyage and Dipsychus and The Spirit. Each is discussed at length in the critical introduction and prefaced by a substantial headnote elucidating its historical background and literary antecedents. Dipsychus and The Spirit is presented here in the first-ever annotated version of the only complete draft of the poem, resulting in a uniquely reliable and accessible text for one of the crucial works of mid-nineteenth-century literature.Selected Poems will be essential reading for all students of nineteenth-century English literature. Providing a wealth of information about the poet and the context of his work, it also represents a substantial contribution to scholarship on the subject in its own right.