Reactionary Lines: Victorian Poetry and the Indian Rebellion

Widely regarded as marking a major watershed in the history of the British Empire (MacKenzie 1999, 280), the Indian Rebellion of 1857–58 also proved to be ‘a compelling literary subject’ (Herbert 2008, 20). Whereas previous investigations of the influence of the Indian Uprising on Victorian literature have largely concentrated on fiction, my paper will join the recent efforts of scholars like Mary Ellis Gibson (2024) to shift the focus of attention towards poetry. In my proposed contribution, I aim to highlight and interpret some recurring tropes deployed in the various poetic responses that the Indian Rebellion elicited from a host of neglected imperial voices, including Sir Vincent Eyre, Gerald Massey, James Innes Minchin, and others. In doing so, I seek to demonstrate the relevance of these now forgotten texts to our collective understanding of the development of British imperial ideology and (literary) discourse in the decades immediately preceding the period of so-called ‘high’ or ‘new’ imperialism (c. 1870–1914)