Victorian Literature PDF EPUB

Festus

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First published: 1839
Pages: 415

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About this book

A sprawling philosophical poem in the tradition of Goethe's Faust, Bailey's work follows its hero Festus through heaven, earth, and hell as he wrestles with faith, doubt, love, and the fate of the soul. First published in 1839, it made the young author famous and became one of the most admired long poems of the Victorian age, quoted and imitated for decades. Bailey kept revising and enlarging it across many editions until it swelled to tens of thousands of lines. Its cosmic ambition and lush verse marked it as a founding work of the so-called Spasmodic school of English poetry.

About the author

Philip James Bailey

Philip James Bailey (1816-1902) was an English poet remembered almost entirely for Festus, the vast philosophical poem he began in his early twenties and revised throughout his life. A leading figure of the Spasmodic school, he enjoyed enormous fame in the mid-Victorian period.

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