Edited by Cristina Artenie

In My Own Land’s Sins, the chronological order of poems suggests that poetical forms advanced through the efforts of a multitude of authors over long periods of time. The reader can glimpse at the state of English poetry at any given moment during the Victorian age. The poems included form a continuous narrative both about the advancement of English poetry and about the social history of Britain under Victoria. The selection of the poems was based on three criteria: their modernity; their preoccupation with the social circumstances of the era; and their usefulness in the classroom.