‘Prison Echoes’: Composing Poetry to Compose Oneself in British Prisons (1830s–1910s)

Abstract

This paper intends to show how prison poems help paint a picture of the strategies of survival and dissent within British prisons. In a world where pencils and papers were at a premium, writing was at once subversive and vital, disruptive and essential. The study of Victorian and Edwardian prison poetry writing highlights strategies developed by prisoners to compose themselves. It contributes to a bottom-up history of prison life, as prisoners who wrote poetry sought to create – to borrow from Virginia Woolf – ‘a cell of their own’. While Victorian places of confinement may not immediately appear as a breeding ground for poetic endeavours, they are loci of creativity and means of expression for those who were, and have often been, voiceless. Behind bars, poems become ego-documents that compose personal stories and a common history of resignation, resistance, and resilience.