The Collected Poems of Henry Kirke White (Romantic Reconfigurations: Studies in Literature and Culture 1780-1850)

This book is the first-ever scholarly edition of one of the bestselling and most revered poets in the nineteenth century—a poet excluded from the canon by twentieth-century critics. A poor youth who died early from tuberculosis, Kirke White shaped the popular image of the Romantic artist as a young rebel against convention who is too sensitive to survive in the harsh commercial world. As a prodigy who made his incipient death the subject of his tragic poetry, he was influential on both sides of the Atlantic—on Keats, Byron, Shelley, Browning, Emerson and Bryant. The edition restores his powerful, macabre and prophetic verse to attention, and also demonstrates his variety and range. It includes a comprehensive introduction discussing the creation of his public image, the marketing of his poetry, and the impacts he made on nineteenth-century poetry, on labouring-class writing and on publishing history.