THE FLESHLY SCHOOL OF POETRY CONTROVERSY

Fœtid Buchanan lifted up his voice

- Ezra Pound ‘Hugh Selwyn Mauberly’ (1920)

The Fleshly School Of Poetry: Mr. D. G. Rossetti

(Robert Buchanan’s review of Rossetti’s Poems, published in The Contemporary Review, October 1871, under the pseudonym, Thomas Maitland)

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The Stealthy School Of Criticism

(Rossetti’s reply to the Thomas Maitland review, published in The Athenaeum, December 1871.
Plus a letter in response to this article from Robert Buchanan.)

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The Fleshly School of Poetry and Other Phenomena of the Day by Robert Buchanan

(The pamphlet version of Buchanan’s attack on the ‘Fleshly Poets’ published by Strahan and Company in 1872.
Available for download as a zipped .rtf file.)

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Under The Microscope by Algernon Charles Swinburne

(Swinburne’s response to Buchanan, published as a pamphlet in 1872. This is the 1899 reprint by Thomas B. Mosher which includes an appendix with Buchanan’s poems, “The Session of the Poets” and “The Monkey and the Microscope” and a section on Buchanan’s apology.
Available for download as a zipped .rtf file.)

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Robert Buchanan v. “The Examiner”

(Newspaper accounts of Buchanan’s 1876 libel action and a note on its possible cause.)

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Extracts from the Diary of Sir Edmund Gosse

(From the Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries, two pages of handwritten extracts from the diaries of Sir Edmund Gosse under the heading, “Robert Buchanan”. They refer to the “Examiner” case and include a physical description of Buchanan.)

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Buchanan’s Apology

(The first edition of Buchanan’s novel, God and the Man (1881) contained the dedicatory verse, ‘To An Old Enemy’. The following year, after Rossetti’s death, a new edition was published with a second poem, ‘To Dante Gabriel Rossetti’ and a Preface in which Buchanan expresses his ‘permanent regret’ for ever having underrated Rossetti’s ‘exquisite work’.)

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Chapter XVI of Harriett Jay’s biography

(Includes Buchanan’s own assessment of the controversy.)

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Letters to Robert Browning

A letter of 7th December 1870 reveals Buchanan’s opinion of Swinburne. Two letters written in March 1872 deal directly with the controversy. A letter of 4th March 1872 includes an extract from Tinsley’s Magazine which mentions Browning in connection with the ‘Fleshly School’. Browning’s response to this has been lost, but Buchanan’s reply begins, “I am delighted to hear you say what you do say, & have only to ask forgiveness for troubling you with a matter so contemptible.”

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Faces on the Wall

The original version of the sonnet sequence published in the Saint Pauls magazine in May 1872 including  ‘To the Della Cruscans’.

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Robert Buchanan and the Fleshly Controversy

by John A. Cassidy
(From Publications of the Modern Language Association, Vol. 67, No. 2. (March, 1952), pp. 65-93.)

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Robert Buchanan’s Critical Principles

by George G. Storey
(From Publications of the Modern Language Association, Vol. 68, No. 5. (Dec., 1953), pp. 1228-1232.)

A short article prompted by John A. Cassidy’s “Robert Buchanan and the Fleshly Controversy”.

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Robert Buchanan, F. J. Furnivall, and the Browning Society: A Letter

An article by Jay Jernigan, originally published in Studies in Browning and His Circle (Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring, 1975), concerning Buchanan’s attempt to enlist the support of F. J. Furnivall in a letter of 1881.

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In addition to the material on this site, I also came across the following essay from Victorian Poetry (Vol. 41, No. 1, Spring, 2003) on the HighBeam Encyclopedia site:

“Intrinsic Earthliness: Science, Materialism, and The Fleshly School of Poetry” by Gowan Dawson.

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(When I first put this site online I decided, rather perversely, to have no mention of ‘The Fleshly School of Poetry’ at all. During my early research into Buchanan I found it was the only thing he was remembered for, and I felt it was time to let it rest. However, I later relented and put the ‘Thomas Maitland’ letter on the site. I also had a guestbook back then which received two visitors - and two alone - one message was signed Rossetti, the other, Swinburne and both complained that I wasn’t telling the full story. The great feud apparently goes on, although I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do to uphold my end - maybe sign the guestbooks of the sites devoted to Rossetti and Swinburne as Thomas Maitland? When I revised the site in May 2006, I decided to set aside a ‘Fleshly School’ page, and this is it. I will continue to add ‘Fleshly School’ material as I come across it, but personally, I still feel that the controversy has been given too much attention and has done immense damage to Buchanan’s reputation.)