George Darley

George Darley was an Irishman, who spent most of his career based in his adoptive home of London, writing poetry, verse drama and criticism for literary periodicals. He is generally regarded as a late Romantic writer, but traces of early Victorian style may equally be read in his highly polished versification and tendency to sentimental morality. Darley’s original publications include The Errors of Ecstasie (1822) and Sylvia (1827). He became an influential and rather aggressive critic of the contemporary state of English poetry and drama, astutely identifying some key deficiencies in others’ practice, but – as certain modern critics have noted – apparently unable to resolve them in his own writing. He w