The Complete Shorter Poetry of George Eliot
Editor: Antonie Gerard van den Broek
Consulting Editor: William Baker
The Pickering Masters
978 1 85196 796 4: 234x156mm: £160.00/$280.00
This two-volume edition brings together all of George Eliot’s poetry – excluding only the volume-length The Spanish Gypsy – and supersedes Cynthia Ann Secor’s unpublished PhD thesis on this subject, the only authoritative edition of Eliot’s poetry. This promises to be the standard edition of her poems for many years to come and will be indispensable for scholars and general readers alike.
The general introduction will discuss Eliot’s interest in poetry and verse and its relation to her prose and prose fiction; her recurring themes and motifs; the poetry’s critical reception and its value to modern readers. Each poem will have an introduction describing the composition of the poems, where Eliot was at the time, what she was reading, and other relevant information, based on Eliot’s own letters, journals and notebooks. The various texts consulted will be listed and textual variants highlighted. And, significantly, notes to help readers better understand Eliot’s poetry will also be included – something that no other edition has ever done. Finally, there will be appendices providing Eliot’s epigraphs to her novels, poetry fragments, Eliot’s essay on ‘Versification’ and an index of first lines.
Contents
Preface
General Introduction
Early Experiment in Verse
‘On Being Called a Saint’ (c.1832–6)
‘Knowing that shortly I must put off this tabernacle’ (c.1839)
‘Sonnet’ (c. September 1839)
‘Question and Answer’ (c. September–October 1840)
‘Mid the rich store of nature’s gifts to man’ (c. January–February 1842)
‘As tu vu la lune se lever’ (August 1849)
The Legend of Jubal (1878) Poems
‘The Legend of Jubal’ (October 5, 1869–January 13, 1870)
‘Agatha’ (January 1869)
‘Armgart’ (August–September 1870)
‘How Lisa Loved the King’(January–February 1869)
‘A Minor Prophet’ (January 1865)
‘Brother and Sister’ (February–August 1869)
‘Stradivarius’ (c.1868 (?))
‘A College Breakfast-Party’ (c. March–April 1874)
‘Two Lovers’ (c. March 1865–September 1866)
‘Self and Life’ (c.1878 (?))
‘Sweet evenings come and go, love’ (c.1865–75)
‘The Death of Moses’ (c. March 1865–September 1866)
‘Arion’ (c. late 1872 or early 1873)
‘O May I Join the Choir Invisible’ (August 1867)
Further Experiment in Verse
‘In a London Drawing Room’ (c.1865)
‘Arms! To Arms!’ (c.1866 (?))
‘Ex Oriente Lux’ (c.1866 (?))
‘In the South’ (c.1867 (?))
‘Will Ladislaw’s Song’ (pre 1871)
‘Erinna’ (c. 1873–6)
‘I grant you ample leave’ (c. April 1874)
‘Mordecai’s Hebrew Verses’ (c.1875)
‘’Mid my gold-brown curls’ (c. January–February 1842)
Appendix A
Epigraphs to Felix Holt, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda
Appendix B
Fragments
Appendix C
Versification
Index of First Lines
Reviews
'This two-volume collection of Eliot's poetry fills a long-standing void; aside from an unpublished doctoral dissertation from the 1960s, no publication brought together all of this important novelist's verse in a complete scholarly edition.
...each poem has an extremely helpful, separate introduction of its own, and the textual variants are thorough and clear...this edition will be extremely welcome to Eliot scholars. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.'
– D. K. Kreisel, CHOICE