New title from Edgecombe

From the pen of Associate Professor Rodney Edgecombe comes a new work on Romantic poet Thomas Hood, A Self Divided Poet: Form and texture in the verse of Thomas Hood.

This is Edgecombe's eleventh book, examining a "neglected minor comic poet", one whose "non-comic verse is better than people hitherto acknowledged".

The volume, published by Cambridge Scholars Press, is the first to devote itself exclusively to Hood's verse, and provides a detailed analysis of two "serious" poems, Hero and Leander and Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, to better reflect his range.

"Hood figures in general poetry studies, but nothing detailed has been written on his work in the past 50 years," Edgecombe notes.

WH Auden thought Hood was a major poet, but Edgecombe remains unconvinced.

"He's caught halfway between being a second-rate and a major poet."

Nonetheless, the book gives Hood's comic genius its due, with "detailed accounts of the deftness and panache of his light-hearted oeuvre".