Selected Poems of Eugene Lee-Hamilton (1845-1907)

“A reader of poetry of rare sensibility and scope, passion and precision, with a deep knowledge of English literature of the late nineteenth century, Professor Jackson selects Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s verse with clarity, concision and conviction. Lee-Hamilton, a sort of Browning on anti-coagulant, spent twenty years on a wheeled bed in Florence, in a psychosomatic version of locked-in syndrome. He travels through space and time and minds, usually in brisk sonnet-length forays, and only rarely, but poignantly, turns to brood on his own plight. . . . Welcome to the canon a poet who fuses the sonnet, the dramatic monologue and the special historicism of the nineteenth century as no one else has ever done.” – Brian Boyd

“His introduction to the edition is scholarly, informative, and easy to read, and will both draw readers to the poems and elucidate them. His account of Lee-Hamilton’s life is acute and well researched, and the close relationship between his life and his art convincingly articulated. I particularly like the way in which various explanations for his years of ill-health are canvassed, and the possible physiological and psychological causes explored. The reader is informed without being forced to adopt a single explanation.” – David Gunby