The Collected Poems of Henry Kirke White

This book is the first ever scholarly edition of one of the best-selling and most revered poets in the nineteenth century – a poet excluded from the canon by twentieth-century critics.

A poor youth who died early from tuberculosis, Kirke White shaped the popular image of the Romantic artist as a young rebel against convention who is too sensitive to survive in the harsh, commercial world.

As a prodigy who made his incipient death the subject of his tragic poetry, he was influential on both sides of the Atlantic — on Keats, Byron, Shelley, Browning, Emerson and Bryant.

The edition restores his powerful, macabre and prophetic verse to attention, and also demonstrates his variety and range.

It includes a comprehensive introduction discussing the creation of his public image, the marketing of his poetry, and the impacts he made on Romantic and Victorian poetry, on labouring-class writing, and on publishing history.