James Richardson, Vanishing Lives: Style and Self in Tennyson, D. G. Rossetti, Swinburne, and Yeats (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988) 240 pp.

Abstract

Richardson’s subject is “dimness”: not simply an elegiac deliquescence but a vertiginous fear of dissolution and, arguably, “one of the most characteristic features of Victorian poetry” (p. 4). He connects the shadowy landscapes of Victorian poetry with correspondingly shifting uncertainties within the psyche; explores the syntactical and rhythmic patterns which accommodate these motifs; and demonstrates some of Yeats’s mature poetic strategies.