Victorian Poetry

Editor 

Devin M. Garofalo

Founding Editor, 1962–1990

 John F. Stasny

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See Victorian Poetry's submissions portal to submit a manuscript and for author guidelines.

Victorian Poetry has undergone a few significant transitions over the last year. The journal has a new editor, Devin M. Garofalo (University of North Texas), and a new publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press. Scholars wishing to submit their work for potential publication should do so via the new Scholastica submissions portal, which includes revised guidelines for article manuscripts, as well as information about special issues and the year’s work in review. Victorian Poetry is also pleased to announce our new early career essay prize and keyword series (more details below). Please direct any queries to the editor using the new journal email address: victorianpoetryjournal@gmail.com.

Call for Submissions: Early Career Essay Prize

Victorian Poetry is pleased to announce a new prize recognizing exemplary essays by untenured scholars of all ranks and affiliations (including contingently employed and graduate student colleagues). Conferred on an annual basis by a committee comprised of members of the journal’s editorial board, the prize carries an award of $500 and publication in Victorian Poetry. Strong essays that do not win the award may also be considered for publication as recommended by the prize committee. Applications are due 30 June 2024. Scholars wishing to be considered should submit anonymized MS Word essays and brief CVs to victorianpoetryjournal@gmail.com with “Early Career Essay Prize” in the subject line. Prior to submission, consult our guidelines for authors.

Winning articles will be selected according to three criteria: (1) significance of contribution to the field of Victorian poetry (including its involvement with Victorian studies and other areas of inquiry in or beyond literary studies); (2) excellence of research, interpretation, and method; and (3) efficacy of presentation. The journal continues to expand its purview to a wider compass of archives and approaches. We welcome work that capaciously (re)interprets the field's originary contexts and reconsiders Victorian poetry (broadly construed) in new, innovative, cross-disciplinary, theoretical, and / or experimental ways.

Call for Proposals: “Poetry’s Parts” Keyword Series

We invite proposals for short keyword essays (ca. 1,100 - 1,300 words) exploring Victorian poetry’s parts, whether formal (“sonnet”) or figural (“apostrophe”), cultural (“cosmopolitan”) or critical (“lyricization”). Considered and published on an ongoing basis (as opposed to appearing in a designated special issue), essays should apprehend pressing conceptual, aesthetic, historical, cultural, political, archival, and / or methodological questions and problems that shape the field (or, alternatively, that have been neglected to the field’s detriment). As warranted, authors might also consider the ways the field (as revealed by the keyword under discussion) is animated by or animates other (sub)disciplines or genealogies of thought in ways recognized or unrecognized.

Keywords need not be limited to those that fall strictly within the specialist purview of Victorian poetry. For instance, essays exploring the resonances of broad concepts such as “atmosphere” or “race” as refracted distinctively by and through Victorian poetry (broadly construed) are most welcome. Because these essays should make arguments as opposed to offering handbook-style overviews, proposals revisiting keywords explored in prior issues will eventually be welcome as the series unfolds. Pedagogical discussion may be appropriate if it serves an illustrative purpose that keeps in view the series’ focus.

Proposals are subject to editorial review (with an eye toward giving deliberate shape to the series, especially in its early stages) and keyword essays to peer review. If contemporaneous appearance in print is necessary for offering substantive insight, the editor will consider joint proposals (ideally, featuring scholars of different ranks and affiliations, on and off the tenure track), whether on the same keyword from quite distinct vantages or on different but productively entangled keywords. Joint proposals should be limited to two or three scholars, as larger groups are difficult to accommodate in print outside the confines of a special issue. Direct queries and proposals to the editor at victorianpoetryjournal@gmail.com.

Victorian Poetry is thrilled to announce that Emma Davenport (Emory University) is the inaugural winner of the journal’s new early career prize! Davenport's forthcoming essay, “Crediting Women’s Poetic Labor: Paradise Lost and Toru Dutt’s ‘Our Casuarina Tree’,” offers a startling, skillful, and persuasive new reading of Dutt as an astute and critical reader of Paradise Lost. Building on evidence that Dutt knew Paradise Lost intimately, the essay shows us how Milton’s association of the Indian banyan tree with sin provides a rich intertext for Dutt to engage, answer, and revise. In a bravura close reading of the text, the author shifts our attention from the tree to the vine that is wrapped around it. Where most readers have read the vine as a figure for the snake—and Satan—in this account we see how Dutt associates the vine with Eve. Furthermore, through the association of Dutt’s name with an Indian vine (the Torulota or Tarulatta), the essay brilliantly demonstrates how Dutt reclaims India and the woman poet from Milton, by way of Milton’s own text. This poetic analysis complicates the binary logic in postcolonial scholarship on Dutt and makes a powerful argument about decolonizing our own analytic frames for reading colonial poetry. Richly researched, beautifully written, and highly original, this essay makes a dazzling new contribution to the project of undisciplining Victorian studies. Keep an eye out for its appearance in print very soon!

Victorian Poetry’s early career prize recognizes exemplary essays by untenured scholars of all ranks and affiliations (including contingently employed and graduate student colleagues). Conferred on an annual basis, the prize carries an award of $500 and publication in Victorian Poetry. Strong essays that do not win the award may also be considered for publication as recommended by the prize committee. The 2025 prize will be advertised early in the new year with anonymized submissions and an accompanying CV due to the editor at midsummer. Winning articles are selected according to three criteria: (1) significance of contribution to the field of Victorian poetry (including its involvement with Victorian studies and other areas of inquiry in or beyond literary studies); (2) excellence of research, interpretation, and method; and (3) efficacy of presentation. The journal continues to expand its purview to a wider compass of archives and approaches. We welcome work that capaciously (re)interprets the field's originary contexts and reconsiders Victorian poetry (broadly construed) in innovative,  cross-disciplinary, theoretical, and / or experimental ways.

For more information about the journal’s latest initiatives (including its new keyword series), visit our Scholastica webpage. Queries can be directed to the editor, Devin M. Garofalo (University of California, San Diego) at victorianpoetryjournal@gmail.com.

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Published quarterly 

Readers include: Scholars, academics, researchers who specialize in Victorian literature, poetry, and cultural studies. 

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