Cover -- Contents -- List of Plates -- Note on the Text -- Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations -- George Meredith: A Brief Chronology -- Introduction -- Modern Love and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads -- Grandfather Bridgeman -- The Meeting -- Modern Love -- Roadside Philosophers -- Juggling Jerry -- The Old Chartist -- The Beggar's Soliloquy -- The Patriot Engineer -- Poems and Ballads -- Cassandra -- The Young Usurper -- Margaret's Bridal-Eve -- Marian -- The Head of Bran -- By Morning Twilight -- Autumn Even-Song -- Unknown Fair Faces -- Phantasy -- Shemselnihar -- [A roar thro' the tall twin elm-trees] -- [When I would image her features] -- [I chafe at darkness in the night] -- By the Rosanna -- Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn -- The Doe: A Fragment (From "Wandering Willie") -- Contexts -- CONTEMPORARY REACTIONS -- Unsigned Review, Parthenon (1862) -- R. H. Hutton, Spectator (1862) -- J. W. Marston, Athenaeum (1862) -- A. C. Swinburne, Spectator (1862) -- Frederick Maxse, Morning Post (1862) -- From Unsigned Review, Westminster Review (1862) -- Unsigned Review, Saturday Review (1863) -- William Sharp, from Sonnets of This Century (1886) -- Arthur Symons, from Westminster Review (1887) -- From Unsigned Review, Travelers Record (1892) -- ADVICE MANUALS AND SOCIAL COMMENTARY -- Sarah Stickney Ellis, from The Wives of England (1843) -- William Cobbett, from Advice to Young Men, and (Incidentally) to Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life (1862) -- John Paget, from "The English Law of Divorce" (1856) -- John Ruskin, from Sesame and Lilies (1865) -- John Stuart Mill, from The Subjection of Women (1869) -- ON THE SENSES -- Alexander Bain, from The Senses and the Intellect (1855) -- A. B. Johnson, from The Physiology of the Senses (1856) -- George Wilson, from The Five Senses (1860).

NINETEENTH-CENTURY POETICS -- Arthur Henry Hallam, from "On Some of the Characteristics of Modern Poetry" (1831) -- Matthew Arnold, from "Preface" to Poems (1853) -- Gerald Massey, from "Poetry-The Spasmodists" (1858) -- Henry James, from "Charles Baudelaire" (1876) -- Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Author's Preface" (1883) -- Gerard Manley Hopkins, Letter on "Harry Ploughman" (1887) -- OTHER POETRY -- John Keats, from "Woman! when I behold thee fl ippant, vain . . . " (1817) and "On the Sea" (1817) -- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, from Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) -- Coventry Patmore, from The Angel in the House (1854-62) -- Charles Baudelaire, "Causerie" (1857) -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from Maud (1859) -- Christina Rossetti, from "Monna Innominata: A Sonnet of Sonnets" (1881) -- Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Harry Ploughman" (1887) -- Textual Variants -- Suggestions for Further Reading -- Index of First Lines -- A -- B -- C -- D -- F -- G -- H -- I -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- S -- T -- V -- W -- Y -- Subject Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- W.