In the literary world popularity is not a necessary criterion for importance. However, whether because of a poet's subject or the manner in which he treats it, popularity can reveal something about a reading public and, thus, something about a period or an age. On that account alone Coventry Patmore is a significant figure in the history of nineteenth-century literature. For a brief time he was one of the most widely read poets in England and had a large following in the United States as well. By Victorian standards, even more by modern ones, sales of The Angel in the House (1858), the work which achieved for him his renown, were astonishing. By the time he died, over a quarter of a million copies of the poem had been sold.

Though he has enthusiastic defenders among the critics today Patmore is read by few, and of those who do...