Faced with the chaos and banality of modern, everyday life, a number of Victorian poets sought innovative ways of writing about the unpoetic present in their verse. Their varied efforts are recognisably akin, not least in their development of mixed verse-forms that fused novel and epic to create something equal to the miscellaneousness of the age.

Natasha Moore is Research Fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity in Sydney, Australia. She received her PhD from the University of Cambridge and has held research fellowships at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Sydney, and the University of Delaware.

Introduction: A Poem of the Age
1. The Modern and the Everyday
2. The Long Narrative Poem
3. The Marriage Plot
4. The Uses of Genre
Ends
Postscript: Finding a form for modern love
Notes
Works Cited
Index