Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-279) and index
The age of elegy -- Carlyle : history and the human voice -- Stopping for death : Tennyson's In memoriam -- Tennyson and the passing of Arthur -- Ruskin's benediction : a reading of Fors clavigera -- Water into wine : the miracle of Ruskin's Praeterita -- Mr. Darwin collects himself -- The Oxford elegists : Newman, Arnold, Hopkins -- Swinburne and the ravages of time -- Walter Pater and the art of evanescence -- Varieties of infernal experience : the fall of the city in Victorian literature
A magisterial study of the Victorian longing for the past in the face of a turbulent present
