Richard Cronin s exceptionally fine book carries out just what its title promises reading. The pleasure of his adroit, meticulously imaginative insights into verbal and metrical effects is constant One of the best general readings of Victorian poetry in the last ten years. Victorian Studies Reading Victorian Poetry will make an excellent introduction to Victorian poetry and gives a good account of a number of key issues. English Studies [A] compelling new critical survey of the period s poems Cronin s deft close readings enable shifts and juxtapositions, and the assured breadth of his knowledge and reference It is a definite strength of Cronin s approach that his own book s attempt to recover ways of appreciating and understanding Victorian poetry overlaps with the techniques Victorian poets themselves used to address and forestall their anxieties about the meaning and value of their work. [It] proves to be a good way of tuning in to the distinctive music of the Victorian poem. The Tennyson Society