Science, Language, and Reform in Victorian Poetry

Barrow’s timely book is the first to examine the link between Victorian poetry, the study of language, and political reform. Focusing on a range of literary, scientific, and political texts, Barrow demonstrates that nineteenth-century debates about language played a key role in shaping emergent ideas about popular sovereignty. While Victorian scientists studied the origins of speech, the history of dialects, and the barrier between human and animal language, poets such as Elizabeth Barrett Brown