On Fri, 30 Jun 2000, domfox wrote:
> Not - quite - to answer your question, I would say that a poet I have
> discovered recently in an academic context (having to teach her work as part
> of a module on C19th women's writing) who seems to me to be seriously
> underrated and deserving a great deal of attention is Augusta Webster. I
> didn't need any persuading at all with her - I think she's better than
> (Robert) Browning (this specific comparison because she wrote dramatic
> monologues).
Considering that she wrote in conscious imitation of Robert
Browning, this is a whopper. I think you need to reread _Men and
Women_ (2 vols, 1855) cover to cover, and then look at her _Dramatic
Studies_ (1866) to get a full sense of her derivativeness. But she is a
very fine and under-rated poet, even by feminist scholars who are busy
adding to the Victorian lit repetoire. There's nothing in her monologue
work, tho, that comes up to the sly and subtle talk of "Bishop Orders" or
"Blougram," and nothing as uncanny as "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower
Came," and . . . . she also didn't write _Sordello_.
> > A work on the same course I couldn't with the best will in
the world
> persuade myself to like was Mary Shelley's _The Last Man_. It's about the
> gradual extermination of the human race by plague, and it's a lot less
> interesting than that sounds.
But at least it has thinly concealed characterizations of Byron and
Shelley. You should try _Valperga_.
David L.
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