This is a book about the conflict between history and poetry – and historians and poets – in Atlantic World society from the end of the seventeenth century to the present day. Blending historiography and theory, it proceeds by asking: what is the point of poetry as far as historians are concerned? The focus is on W. H. Auden’s Cold War-era history poems, but the book also looks at other poets from the seventeenth century onwards, providing original accounts of their poetic and historical educations. An important resource for those teaching undergraduate and postgraduate courses in historiography and history and theory, Poetry for historians will also be of relevance to courses on literature in society and the history of education. General readers will relate it to Steedman’s Landscape for a Good Woman (1987) and Dust (2001), on account of its biographical and autobiographical insights into the way history operates in modern society.
Table of Content
Introduction
PART I: History
1 Servant poets: an ode on a dishclout
2 W. H. Auden and the servants
3 The uses of Clio
4 An education
5 W. H. Auden and me
6 Caesura: a worker reads history and a historian writes poetry
PART II: Historiography
7 Makers of history
8 Homage to Clio
9 The ridiculous historian’s hopes
Conclusion
Index
About the author
Carolyn Steedman is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Warwick
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