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Favorite Parlour Poetry: An Annotated Anthology
Features 117 gems by Longfellow, James Whitcomb Riley, Tennyson, Browning, John Greenleaf Whittier and dozens of lesser-known poets. Many poems difficult to find elsewhere. Includes "The Village Blacksmith," "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight," "The Wreck of the Hesperus," "The Lips That Touch Liquor Shall Never Touch Mine," more. Preface. Index of poets, titles and first lines.
- GenresPoetry
325 pages, Paperback
First published March 25, 1992
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February 10, 2023
Victorian Parlour Poetry is an odd book on my shelves for one reason: I love having it there even though I find the contents ludicrous. Usually I’d send the book out of my home with a pat on the cover and a sigh of relief. A hint to the content: the editor lovingly connects all the parody poems in Alice in Wonderland to their long-forgotten originals.
This volume collects popular poems of the Victorian era, the ones that were published in newspapers, recited by schoolchildren, and read by families around the hearth. A few familiar faces lurk here, like “A Visit from St Nicholas.” Keats, Longfellow, Nash, and Poe are present, but many poems are by one-hit wonders, anonymous writers, and poets whose lack of remembrance is merciful. These are the poems that grew to infamy by being relentlessly parodied, whose attempts at tender pathos land as bathos, and whose dogged efforts at meter emerge as doggerel.
I mean, it makes sense. The Victorian era, known for its poets like Keats and Yeats and others, had to have had its duds. Thinking that everything is better just because it is old is what the Pope calls backwardism. If classics are old and have “endured,” most of these poems are just old. We remember the good stuff, the Alcotts and Poes and Twains, but forget the Ethel Lynn Beerses and Martin Farquhar Tuppers. Will anyone remember Lee Child or E. L. James in 150 years? These poets were sometimes richer and more popular in their own day--as are many of the frowned-upon writers of today. (Please see "Don't Make Fun of Renowned Author Dan Brown".) A prophet is without honor in his own town, and a good writer is often without notoriety in his own day and age.
It was rather fun to find the source of many quotations and images I’ve come across in fiction of the era. The editor’s wry humor made reading each awful poem worth it. His humor was quite tongue-in-cheek and always accurate, though sometimes mean.
If you are looking for the Victorian version of inspirational posters, or Chicken Soup for the Soul, or Lifetime movies, you will find all of that here. Especially the Lifetime movies. Victorians loved maudlin poems. And I admit that my distaste for these poems emerged from too many all at once. Listening to a couple of these poems a year, read or recited by a friend or family member, would be much more palatable than having to read them back-to-back. And, I don’t have a taste for Lifetime movies or inspirational posters. When I come across a book marketing itself as “inspirational” I usually pick up something else.
If you, too, have a burning desire to know the sources of poems quoted (or parodied) in your favorite Victorian novels, look no further. It would be especially helpful to anyone writing a paper on poems parodied in Alice in Wonderland. Or...if I may be scathingly honest...to anyone looking into the reason for poetry's decline in the popular consciousness.
Samples of Michael R. Turner’s Erudite Sauciness
“Even the aberrations of Byron and Poe, bringing a whiff of brimstone into the halls of Parnassus, did not endanger public approbation of their verse, for, after all, were they not more to be pitied than condemned, the former a romantic English aristocrat and the latter a sad victim of intemperance?” (viii)
“The ideal pauper, to middle-class eyes, was the hero of ‘In the Workhouse,’ who, scornful to smug, condescending charity, will nevertheless let his wife starve to death rather than steal a loaf.” (ix)
“...Victorian popular verse can be indicted for being normally mawkish, pompous, bombastic, and mealy-mouthed….All the same, readers with grosser sensibilities are not prevented from finding it fascinating as a social and literary phenomenon, smiling wryly at the climate of moral certitude, enjoying the simple, often exciting rhythms, recognizing the half-forgotten, and, yes, discovering here and there nuggets of gold.” (ix)
“Numerous admirers pursued [Amelia Alderson] in vain, for she married John Opie, the celebrated painter, and to keep her at home, he encouraged her to write the lachrymose poems and novels that reduced even Sir Walter Scott to tears….In later years she was a portly, jolly old lady, who, when visiting the Great Exhibition of 1851 in a wheel-chair, challenged another octogenarian to a chair race.” (18)
[On Martin Farquhar Tupper] “Unhappily, this sincere and worthy author, despite Fellowship of the Royal Society, despite a gold medal from the King of Prussia, despite a D.C.L. from Oxford, despite the encouragement given to the volunteer movement by his War Ballads and Rifle Ballads, despite a public testimonial, despite tokens of admiration from Her Majesty the Queen, was treated with scant respect by the press, to a degree amounting, he considered, to persecution.” (310; a reimagining of this sentence would certainly receive notice in the Edgar Bulwer-Lytton contest)
Samples of Verse
No room for little Willie
In the world he had no part;
On him stared the Gorgon-eye
Through which looks no heart.
‘Come to me,’ said Heaven;
And if Heaven will save,
Little matters though the door
Be a workhouse grave.
(Stanza VI of “Little Willie,” Gerald Massey, p. 8)
When the candles burn low, and the company’s gone,
In the silence of night as I sit here alone--
I sit here alone, but we are yet a pair--
My Fanny I see in my cane-bottom’d chair.
(Stanza XIII of “The Cane-Bottom’d Chair” by William Makepeace Thackeray, p. 102)
Notably-titled poems include “The Deacon’s Masterpiece, or The Wonderful ‘One-Hoss Shay’” by Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Over the Hill to the Poor-House” by Will Carleton, and “The Old Man’s Comforts and How He Gained Them” by Robert Southey. The latter poem begins “‘You are old, Father William,’” and Turner notes that “Lewis Carrol’s superb burlesque in Alice in Wonderland is even longer than the original and has banished it almost to oblivion.” (267-268)
Also notable are the inclusion of horrid attempts at dialect poems (horrid because the writers are not native speakers of the dialects they attempt) and the total lack of writers of color. Though, to be honest, if I were Emma Lazarus or Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, I would not feel especially slighted to not be included in this volume.
This volume collects popular poems of the Victorian era, the ones that were published in newspapers, recited by schoolchildren, and read by families around the hearth. A few familiar faces lurk here, like “A Visit from St Nicholas.” Keats, Longfellow, Nash, and Poe are present, but many poems are by one-hit wonders, anonymous writers, and poets whose lack of remembrance is merciful. These are the poems that grew to infamy by being relentlessly parodied, whose attempts at tender pathos land as bathos, and whose dogged efforts at meter emerge as doggerel.
I mean, it makes sense. The Victorian era, known for its poets like Keats and Yeats and others, had to have had its duds. Thinking that everything is better just because it is old is what the Pope calls backwardism. If classics are old and have “endured,” most of these poems are just old. We remember the good stuff, the Alcotts and Poes and Twains, but forget the Ethel Lynn Beerses and Martin Farquhar Tuppers. Will anyone remember Lee Child or E. L. James in 150 years? These poets were sometimes richer and more popular in their own day--as are many of the frowned-upon writers of today. (Please see "Don't Make Fun of Renowned Author Dan Brown".) A prophet is without honor in his own town, and a good writer is often without notoriety in his own day and age.
It was rather fun to find the source of many quotations and images I’ve come across in fiction of the era. The editor’s wry humor made reading each awful poem worth it. His humor was quite tongue-in-cheek and always accurate, though sometimes mean.
If you are looking for the Victorian version of inspirational posters, or Chicken Soup for the Soul, or Lifetime movies, you will find all of that here. Especially the Lifetime movies. Victorians loved maudlin poems. And I admit that my distaste for these poems emerged from too many all at once. Listening to a couple of these poems a year, read or recited by a friend or family member, would be much more palatable than having to read them back-to-back. And, I don’t have a taste for Lifetime movies or inspirational posters. When I come across a book marketing itself as “inspirational” I usually pick up something else.
If you, too, have a burning desire to know the sources of poems quoted (or parodied) in your favorite Victorian novels, look no further. It would be especially helpful to anyone writing a paper on poems parodied in Alice in Wonderland. Or...if I may be scathingly honest...to anyone looking into the reason for poetry's decline in the popular consciousness.
Samples of Michael R. Turner’s Erudite Sauciness
“Even the aberrations of Byron and Poe, bringing a whiff of brimstone into the halls of Parnassus, did not endanger public approbation of their verse, for, after all, were they not more to be pitied than condemned, the former a romantic English aristocrat and the latter a sad victim of intemperance?” (viii)
“The ideal pauper, to middle-class eyes, was the hero of ‘In the Workhouse,’ who, scornful to smug, condescending charity, will nevertheless let his wife starve to death rather than steal a loaf.” (ix)
“...Victorian popular verse can be indicted for being normally mawkish, pompous, bombastic, and mealy-mouthed….All the same, readers with grosser sensibilities are not prevented from finding it fascinating as a social and literary phenomenon, smiling wryly at the climate of moral certitude, enjoying the simple, often exciting rhythms, recognizing the half-forgotten, and, yes, discovering here and there nuggets of gold.” (ix)
“Numerous admirers pursued [Amelia Alderson] in vain, for she married John Opie, the celebrated painter, and to keep her at home, he encouraged her to write the lachrymose poems and novels that reduced even Sir Walter Scott to tears….In later years she was a portly, jolly old lady, who, when visiting the Great Exhibition of 1851 in a wheel-chair, challenged another octogenarian to a chair race.” (18)
[On Martin Farquhar Tupper] “Unhappily, this sincere and worthy author, despite Fellowship of the Royal Society, despite a gold medal from the King of Prussia, despite a D.C.L. from Oxford, despite the encouragement given to the volunteer movement by his War Ballads and Rifle Ballads, despite a public testimonial, despite tokens of admiration from Her Majesty the Queen, was treated with scant respect by the press, to a degree amounting, he considered, to persecution.” (310; a reimagining of this sentence would certainly receive notice in the Edgar Bulwer-Lytton contest)
Samples of Verse
No room for little Willie
In the world he had no part;
On him stared the Gorgon-eye
Through which looks no heart.
‘Come to me,’ said Heaven;
And if Heaven will save,
Little matters though the door
Be a workhouse grave.
(Stanza VI of “Little Willie,” Gerald Massey, p. 8)
When the candles burn low, and the company’s gone,
In the silence of night as I sit here alone--
I sit here alone, but we are yet a pair--
My Fanny I see in my cane-bottom’d chair.
(Stanza XIII of “The Cane-Bottom’d Chair” by William Makepeace Thackeray, p. 102)
Notably-titled poems include “The Deacon’s Masterpiece, or The Wonderful ‘One-Hoss Shay’” by Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Over the Hill to the Poor-House” by Will Carleton, and “The Old Man’s Comforts and How He Gained Them” by Robert Southey. The latter poem begins “‘You are old, Father William,’” and Turner notes that “Lewis Carrol’s superb burlesque in Alice in Wonderland is even longer than the original and has banished it almost to oblivion.” (267-268)
Also notable are the inclusion of horrid attempts at dialect poems (horrid because the writers are not native speakers of the dialects they attempt) and the total lack of writers of color. Though, to be honest, if I were Emma Lazarus or Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, I would not feel especially slighted to not be included in this volume.
February 25, 2017
Absolutely delightful anthology of 19th Century English and American poetry read by the public. They appeared in newspapers and journals that were consumed by the middle class. Some are trivial but most are brilliant pieces of literature that accurately reflect the tastes of the Victorian era. I found many of my favorite pieces of poetry included in this volume. Many of the authors are well known but most are forgotten or even unknown. I loved every minute of the book.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews