SOURCE: Hatch, Ronald B. “George Crabbe and the Workhouses of the Suffolk Incorporations.” Philological Quarterly 54, no. 3 (summer 1975): 689-98.

In the following essay, Hatch analyzes Crabbe's poems that deal with poorhouses, underscoring the poet's opinions on such institutions.

At first glance most modern-day readers probably suspect that George Crabbe included a description of the poorhouse in The Borough (1810) in order to remind his audience of the famous description of the parish poorhouse in The Village (1783). Certainly the description of the poorhouse in The Village was the best-known section of Crabbe's poetry, partly as a result of Knox's having included it in his much-read Elegant Extracts. Jeffrey, as well as many others, had singled out that description of the poorhouse as one of the high points of Crabbe's poetry.¹ But a moment's thought will reveal that the type of poorhouse described in The Borough is very different from that formerly...