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This paper explores the contingent and affective dimensions of genre in Victorian criticism on the ballad. Aesthetic judgments comprise an important part of the historical meta-discourse surrounding literary genres, yet these categories occupy only a marginal position in our present theories of genre. The terms of aesthetic judgment tend to fall out when we tally historical genres' discursive conventions and map their formal and thematic contours. In contrast, Victorian literary criticism's dependence on the language of feeling, not only in describing individual works but also in shaping generic taxonomies, provides an opportunity to consider the ways in which the seemingly irreducible particularities of aesthetic experience meet the generalizing force of genre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At just after six in the evening on 16 June 1851, a balloon carrying two passengers narrowly avoided crashing into the transept of the Crystal Palace. This near-disastrous balloon ascent was the result of just one of the popular entertainments that sprang up to capitalize on the crowds of visitors to the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in London in 1851. Despite the fact that on this occasion popular entertainment and didactic recreation almost literally collided, histories of the Exhibition have kept the two separate. It is notable that today the Great Exhibition is most often studied through sources such as Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Fxhibition of 1851 (1852), the Art Journal Illustrated Catalogue (1851), or the Illustrated London News, all aimed at middle-class audiences. However, cheap broadside ballads also commented on the Exhibition and offer alternative perspectives on the event. This paper focuses on these neglected sources and reads them within a broader network of literary and visual sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recent studies of Victorian literary criticism have investigated poetry's place in the periodical press, little attention has been paid to the history of poetry published in large-circulation general newspapers. this essay discusses poetry published in The London Times during the 1860s, examining the literal place of poetry within the newspaper, its themes and formal characteristics, and its relation to authorship. I suggest that reading these poems in relation to their original material context raises theoretical questions about the history of reading, intertextuality, and poetry's function in the public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]