Out of My Borrowed Books

This anthology brings together for the first time a substantial selection of poems by Augusta Webster (1837-94), Mathilde Blind (1841-96) and Amy Levy (1861-89), three poets whose writing both reflected and helped to shape a time when women were working out structures for new kinds of lives and the language for new voices. All three were conscious of the traditions they inherited and remade. The tensions they explore, between compliance and transgression, independence and isolation, make their poetry both creatively rewarding and historically significant. Many of the poems in this selection have been neglected for almost a century: now, restored to their context in the late Victorian literary landscape, their compelling imaginative worlds are once more made accessible to readers. The anthology includes an introduction to the lives and cultural context of the three poets, bibliographies and detailed notes on the poems.