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COPYRIGHT 2000 Boston University
Stephen Gill. Wordsworth and the Victorians. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Pp. x+346. $45.00.
Stephen Gill's 1989 William Wordsworth: A Life has now become the definitive biography of the poet for scholars and for general readers interested in the kind of work that often a full view of a long life accompanied by an intelligent and sensitive blending of that life with perceptive commentary on the works. His skill in tracing continuities, in avoiding easy generalizations about "early" and "later" Wordsworth, in studying the poet's French episode, in treating with care and discrimination his relationship with Dorothy, Annette, Mary, and other women in the story, in reading wisely and well a remarkable range of poems--in so many ways he has set a high standard. And his achievement is enhanced by a methodology that balances admirably a respect for biographical method with a clear awareness of recent theoretical speculation about the genre.
Gill's high standard prevails again in his new volume Wordsworth and the Victorians as he follows in successive chapters the gradual emergence of Wordsworth as a spiritual force not just for his fellow poets, but for great prose writers like Arnold, Carlyle, and Mill, for novelists like George Eliot, and for religious writers like Newman, Keble, and...
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