Includes bibliographical references and index.

Two systems of concentric circles -- Experiments of 1830 : Tennyson and the formation of subversive, conservative poetry -- 1832 : critique of the poetry of sensation -- Experiments in the 1830s : Browning and the Benthamite formation -- The politics of dramatic form -- Individualism under pressure -- The radical in crisis : Clough -- The liberal in crisis : Arnold -- A new radical aesthetic - the grotesque as cultural critique : Morris -- Tennyson in the 1850s : new experiments in conservative poetry and the type -- Browning in the 1850s and after : new experiments in radical poetry and the grotesque -- 'A music of thine own' : women's poetry - an expressive tradition -- Swinburne : agonistic Republican - the poetry of sensation as democratic critique -- Hopkins : agonistic reactionary - the grotesque as conservative form -- Meredith and others : hard, gem-like dissidence -- James Thomson : atheist, blasphemer and anarchist - the grotesque sublime -- Alternative fins de siècles : Rudyard Kipling, Michael Field, Thomas Hardy, Alice Meynell.