Coventry Patmore’s Journalism: The Interface between Conservative Politics and Social Justice

Authors

  • Lesa Scholl

Keywords:

Coventry Patmore, journalism, social reform, conservatism, politics

Abstract

Critical work on Coventry Patmore has tended to see him through the lens of his perceived misogyny. Although recent scholarship has sought to recover him in a different light, his political journalism remains almost entirely neglected. This essay examines the way in which Patmore’s journalism challenges the complacency of late-Victorian conservative politics from a conservative perspective, asserting a vision of social justice that is predicated on the individual’s responsibility toward their community. This social vision in response to the failure of institutionalised social reforms owes much to Patmore’s original adherence to Tractarian values.

References

Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel. Oxford: OUP, 1987.

Brown, Stewart J. Providence and Empire 1815-1914. 2008. London and New York: Routledge, 2013.

Dieleman, Karen. Religious Imaginaries: The Liturgical and Poetic Practices of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Adelaide Procter. Athens: Ohio UP, 2012.

Fisher, Benjamin F. “Introduction: Patmore: ‘Teacups and Muffins’ or Pertinacious Victorian Poet?” Victorian Poetry 34.4 (1996): 439-42.

---. “The Supernatural in Patmore’s Poetry.” Victorian Poetry 34.4 (1996): 544-57.

Freeman, John. “Coventry Patmore.” The North American Review 218.813 (1923): 221-32.

Garnett, Richard. “Poetry, Prose, and Mr. Patmore.” Macmillan’s Magazine 3 (1860): 121-30.

Goodlad, Lauren M. E. Victorian Literature and the Victorian State: Character and Governance in a Liberal Society. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 2003.

Jones, Ewan. “Coventry Patmore’s Corpus.” ELH 83.1 (2016): 839-72.

King, Joshua. “Patmore, Hopkins, and the Problem of the English Metrical Law.” Victorian Poetry 49.2 (2011): 31-49.

Martin, Meredith. The Rise and Fall of Meter: Poetry and English National Culture, 1860 – 1930. Princeton: Princeton UP. 2012.

Maynard, John. “The Unknown Patmore.” Victorian Poetry 34.4 (1996): 443-55.

Moore, Natasha. “The Realism of The Angel in the House: Coventry Patmore’s Poem Reconsidered.” Victorian Literature and Culture 43 (2015): 41-61.

Oliver, E.J. Coventry Patmore. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1921.

Patmore, Coventry. “A Safe Charity.” In Courage in Politics. 46-51.

---. “Courage in Politics.” In Courage in Politics. 11-17.

---. Courage in Politics and Other Essays, 1885-1896. London: Humphrey Milford and OUP, 1921.

---. “Manifest Destiny.” In Courage in Politics. 9-11.

---. Poetry of Pathos and Delight: From the Works of Coventry Patmore. Ed. Alice Meynell. New York: Putnam, 1896.

Reid, J.C. The Mind and Art of Coventry Patmore. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957.

Rowbotham, Judith. Good Girls Make Good Wives: Guidance for Girls in Victorian Fiction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.

Rudy, Jason. Electric Meters: Victorian Physiological Poetics. Athens: Ohio UP, 2009.

Simon Skinner, Simon. “Social and Political Commentary.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Oxford Movement. Ed. Stewart J. Brown, Peter B. Nockles and James Pereiro. Oxford: OUP, 2017. 333–48.

---. Tractarians and the “Condition of England”: The Social and Political Thought of the Oxford Movement. Oxford: Clarendon, 2004.

Woolf, Virginia. “Professions for Women.” 1942. In Virginia Woolf: Selected Essays. Ed. David Bradshaw. Oxford: OUP, 2009. 140-45.

Downloads

Published

2020-06-11