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FDU PRESS
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| Scholarly Review |
 | The Selected Poetry of Ebenezer Elliott
ISBN# 9780838641347
Reviewed by: Scott McEathron, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
BARS Bulletin, 39 (December 2011) |
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Mark Storey's selection of Ebenezer Elliott's poetry is the first new edition in well over a century, and, incredibly, the first-ever scholarly edition of Elliott's work. The volume thus fills a grievous need.
Storey's introduction begins with biographical background, but broadens into a discussion of the public debate surrounding the aims and purposes of poetry in the years between 1800 and 1840. With reference to figures about whom he has written before, including Clare, Southey, Byron, crabbe, and Wordsworth, Storey addresses a series of socio-aesthetic issues, including the prevailing critical tensions surrounding activist and 'realist' poetic modes, and Elliott's economic status relative to the tradition of labouring-class verse. Storey argues that Elliott's eventual decision to cut through the critical noise with an aggressively political verse was enabled partly by his deep reading in the canon, including the sentimental and gothic texts that had so heavily influenced his early poetry of the 1810s and 20s. In charting the changes in Elliott's style, Storey does a fine job clarifying the confusion surrounding the contents of the various, overlapping volumes published in Elliott's lifetime, including those volumes that first contained the phrase, and putative genre, that Elliott called his own: the 'Corn-Law Rhyme.' Story offers a concise overview of the frequently baffling history of the Corn Laws, describing the ways that efforts to amend, abolish, or further these laws, which for Elliott were the proximate cause of virtually every financial and social ill in England, became entangled with larger debates about reform and representation.
This fine volume makes the case implicitly that a complete edition of Elliott's poetry and prose, incorporating manuscript material, is long overdue. But Storey's edition is an excellent start, and one that will pave the way for much critical work in upcoming years.
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