In the previous chapters, I examined the ways in which poetry defines the brand of a periodical. It can stand in for the editor, introducing the periodical to its readers (Once a Week); it can implicitly support the editorial mandate and dominant ideologies of a periodical through its content (Household Words, All the Year Round, the Cornhill, Good Words); and it can signal both implicitly and explicitly the cultural pretentions of a publication (Macmillan's Magazine and the Cornhill). This chapter moves away from questions of branding and periodical forms for a more sustained discussion about the poetics of periodical poetry. Focusing on the Argosy, a mid-1860s shilling monthly published by Alexander Strahan and edited by Isa Craig – the first and only female editor included in this study – this chapter argues that a careful reading of the periodical's sentimental poetry challenges the critical dismissal of such light, entertaining verse as simplistic, marginal, and trite. Though Craig occupied the role of editor for a relatively short period of time (December 1865 to 1867), her personal and professional networks as well as her own experience as a female poet defined the Argosy's approach to poetry and contributed to the periodical's reformulation of feminine poetics. Under her editorship, the Argosy brought together a number of female poets whose work explores and expands the boundaries of poetic form. The periodical poems of Christina Rossetti, Isa Craig, Jean Ingelow and Sarah Williams all test, challenge and champion the conventions of the sentimental lyric form to produce a new poetics, one defined both through and against conventional representations of the Victorian poetess and her gushing, heart-inspired poetry.

My analysis of the Argosy unpacks what Caroline Levine calls ‘the relations between culture and power’ (2006b: 104), arguing that the formal features of the periodical's poetry, specifically its sentimental subject matter and imagery, lay bare and challenge the cultural binaries that came to define popular poetry from the era. As briefly alluded to in the introduction, one way to understand the power behind these cultural binaries is through Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital, which sees the market for literature and art as divided according to a product's accessibility.