Arthur O'Shaughnessy, A Pre-Raphaelite Poet in the British Museum / Edition 1

by Jordan Kistler

Overview

In her study of Arthur O'Shaughnessy (1844-1881), Jordan Kistler examines the Pre-Raphaelite poet's work in the context of his career as a natural historian at the British Museum. Making use of extensive archival research, she demonstrates O'Shaughnessy's importance to the cultural milieu of the 1870s, particularly his contributions to English aestheticism, his role in the importation of decadence from France, and his unique position within contemporary debates on science and literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472467355
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/24/2016
Series:	Among the Victorians and Modernists
Pages:	210
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jordan Kistler is a Teaching Fellow in Victorian Literature at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her work focuses on the often-overlooked Pre-Raphaelite poets of the 1870s.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

Introduction

1 'Dreary Creeds' and 'Sham Wits': O'Shaughnessy's Poetic Representations of Nature and Science

2 'I Carve the Marble of Pure Thought': Work and Art in the Poetry of Arthur O'Shaughnessy

3 'The Purest Parian': The Formalism of Arthur O'Shaughnessy

4 'Those too sanguine singers': Arthur O'Shaughnessy's French Influences

5 'Love's Splendid Lures': Arthur O'Shaughnessy's Medievalism

Conclusion

Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Unjustly neglected for over a century, Arthur O'Shaughnessy is an unusual Pre-Raphaelite poet whose unromantic day job as a taxonomist set him apart from his literary peers. However, as Kistler shows, his writings shed important light on the works of better-known contemporaries such as Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne. Kistler reclaims and contextualizes his works for a twenty-first-century readership, demonstrating that O'Shaughnessy is a Victorian poet with something significant to say about his own period and modernity. Her book constitutes a valuable contribution to the study of Victorian poetry and extends our knowledge not only of O'Shaughnessy, but of the broader context that gave rise to the Arts and Crafts movement, Aestheticism and Decadence."

- Patricia Pulham, University of Portsmouth, UK

"Kistler does a great job of showing not only that O'Shaughnessy's poetry is worth further exploration (and appreciation), but also why O'Shaughnessy is significant..."

- Helena Ifill, University of Sheffield in The British Society for Literature and Science

From the Publisher