Florence Boos
Vol. 17, No. 2 (Fall 1998), 325-347

This essay meditates on the politics of an as yet obscure group of poets: Victorian Scottish working-class women. Presenting the work of Elizabeth Campbell, Jane Stevenson, and Mary Macpherson, three women discovered through research in the Glasgow Mitchell Library archives, this paper illustrates their responses to the political and economic oppressions of the Highland Clearances and the industrial revolution. Because these women were so marginalized, their work eludes the middle-class cooptation characteristic of much lower-class Victorian women’s poetry. As a result, their poetry possesses a pristine beauty that mirrors the beauty of the land, the loss and degradation of which they frequently lament. Although for the most part this poetry does not attempt to influence the course of political events, it compellingly portrays the human consequences of policies that profoundly dislocated the Scottish people.