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Selected and introduced by Alex Wong
Thomas Hood (1799-1845) was one of the most popular British poets of his time, but also among the finest and the most idiosyncratic. Remembered chiefly for his outrageous punning and for his poems of social conscience, he was a master of both comical verse and Keatsian Romanticism, as well as much in between.
In this new selection, Alex Wong teases out Hood's singular achievement, drawing our attention to the poet’s most ambitious work — serious in its artistic ambitions, whatever the tone — in order to reveal a distinct sensibility in which melancholy and 'idiot laughter' are never far apart.
Alex Wong is the author of two collections of poetry, Poems Without Irony (2016) and Shadow and Refrain (2021). He has also edited and introduced selections from the work of the Victorian writers A.C. Swinburne, Walter Pater and Alice Meynell.
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Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,— Would that its tone could reach the Rich!— She sang this “Song of the Shirt!”
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Publication date: 15 May 2026
36pp, staple-bound in card covers
Printed on Munken Pure paper in East London by Angel Press
ISBN: 978-1-9195507-1-8
Selected and introduced by Alex Wong
Thomas Hood (1799-1845) was one of the most popular British poets of his time, but also among the finest and the most idiosyncratic. Remembered chiefly for his outrageous punning and for his poems of social conscience, he was a master of both comical verse and Keatsian Romanticism, as well as much in between.
In this new selection, Alex Wong teases out Hood's singular achievement, drawing our attention to the poet’s most ambitious work — serious in its artistic ambitions, whatever the tone — in order to reveal a distinct sensibility in which melancholy and 'idiot laughter' are never far apart.
Alex Wong is the author of two collections of poetry, Poems Without Irony (2016) and Shadow and Refrain (2021). He has also edited and introduced selections from the work of the Victorian writers A.C. Swinburne, Walter Pater and Alice Meynell.
—
Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,— Would that its tone could reach the Rich!— She sang this “Song of the Shirt!”
—
Publication date: 15 May 2026
36pp, staple-bound in card covers
Printed on Munken Pure paper in East London by Angel Press
ISBN: 978-1-9195507-1-8