Sound The Deep Waters: Women’s Romantic Poetry in The Romantic Age

Who was the Victorian Woman? The popular myth that she was the “Angel in the house”, the loving wife, caring mother, in possession of neither opinions nor passions is one that if not already exploded, will certainly vanish with a reading of this delightful anthology.

This collection offers familiar favourites such as Christina Rossetti’s ‘Up-hill’ and ‘A Birthday’ and Emily Jane Bronte’s ‘Remembrance’ as well as poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot and Edith Nesbit, but the reader is also introduced to less well known poets such as Mary Elizabeth Coleridge. Alice Meynell. and Dollie Radford. American poets of the period are not neglected and works exhibiting the virtuoso genius of Emily Dickinson and pieces by Amy Lowell and Emma Lazarus are part of the rich selection.

The images that accompany the poems are all by very well known Victorian artists, such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Millais, John Waterhouse, Edward Burne-Jones, William Holman Hunt, and Ford Madox Brown, however, the anthology introduces the reader to extraordinary works of art by women painters of the period such as Evelyn de Morgan, Kate Bunce, Marie Stillman and Edith Corbet.

The introduction- and selection- is by Pamela Norris, a world authority on Victorian literature.