ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains the importance of the long poem as a literary genre in mid-to-late nineteenth-century British literature, with an emphasis on the classic poems represented here. It describes the construction and critical fate of 'A Life-Drama' has important implications for the discussions of the long poems. The book explores relationship between The Ring and the Book and Aurora Leigh is also complex and interesting, and some of the links between them. It considers the heightened Victorian literary awareness of issues related to the ancient problem of male violence in the context of increased efforts to control it in the criminal justice system, as noted by historian Martin J. Wiener. In the case of the long poem with overt or implied pretensions to the genre of epic, the pressures on the Victorian poet were particularly severe.
