Verse Novel - History

History

Verse narratives are as old as the epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad, and the Odyssey, but the verse novel is a distinct modern form. Although the narrative structure is similar to that of a novella, the organisation of the story is usually in a series of short sections, often with changing perspectives. Verse novels are often told with multiple narrators, potentially providing readers with a cinematic view into the inner workings of the characters' minds. Some verse novels, following Byron's mock-heroic Don Juan (1818–24) employ an informal, colloquial register. Eugene Onegin (1831) by Alexander Pushkin is a classical example, and with Pan Tadeusz (1834) by Adam Mickiewicz is often taken as the seminal example of the modern genre.

The major nineteenth-century verse novels that ground the form in Anglophone letters include The Bothie of Toper-na-fuisich (1848) and Amours de Voyage (1858) by Arthur Hugh Clough, Aurora Leigh (1857) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lucile (1860) by 'Owen Meredith' (Robert Bulwer-Lytton), and The Ring and the Book (1868-9) by Robert Browning. The form appears to have declined with Modernism, but has since the 1960s-70s undergone a remarkable revival. Of particular note, Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate (1986) was a surprise bestseller, and Derek Walcott's Omeros (1990) a more predictable success. The form has been particularly popular in the Caribbean, with work since 1980 by Walcott, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, David Dabydeen, Kwame Dawes, Ralph Thompson, George Elliott Clarke and Fred D'Aguiar, and in Australia and New Zealand, with work since 1990 by Les Murray, John Tranter, Dorothy Porter, Chris Orsman, David Foster, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, and Robert Sullivan.

The parallel history of the verse autobiography, from strong Victorian foundation with Wordsworth's The Prelude (1805, 1850), to decline with Modernism and later twentieth-century revival with John Betjeman's Summoned by Bells (1960), Walcott's Another Life (1973), and James Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover (1982), is also striking. The forms are distinct, but many verse novels plainly deploy autobiographical elements, and the recent Commonwealth examples almost all offer detailed representation of the (problems besetting) post-imperial and post-colonial identity, and so are inevitably strongly personal works.

There is also a distinct cluster of verse novels for younger readers, most notably Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust, which won a Newbery Medal in 1998. Hesse followed it with Witness (2001). Since then, many new titles have cropped up, with authors Sonya Sones, Ellen Hopkins, Steven Herrick, Margaret Wild, Nikki Grimes, Virginia Euwer Wolff, Ann Warren Turner, Lorie Ann Grover, Brenda Seabrooke, Paul B. Janeczko, and Mel Glenn all publishing multiple titles. Debut YA authors, Holly Thompson, Cathy Ostlere, Sarah Tregay, and others have added new titles to the shelves in 2011. In 2012, Thanhha Lai's Inside Out and Back Again won the National Book Award.