ABSTRACT
The late Victorian period saw the idea of the poet as public moralist fade, and the idea of the poet as a creature of aesthetic autonomy rise. The period saw a rise in mass literacy and attendant changes in the economics of the publishing industry, largely to the detriment of poets. It saw, too, a crisis in the idea of the writer as moralist, stemming from the de-legitimation of literature as a form of knowledge. These and other changes conspired to strain the ties of sympathy that had held poets and their readers together. The changes gave birth to a minority culture, set apart from the broader public. This aesthetic withdrawal can be seen as a critique of society.
