25 pages • 50 minutes read
The Song of the Shirt
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Summary and Study Guide
Overview
“The Song of the Shirt” was written by English author, editor, poet, and humorist Thomas Hood. The poem was originally published in an 1843 Christmas edition of the popular Victorian magazine Punch. Written around the end of Victorian England’s Industrial Revolution, “The Song of the Shirt” participates in one of the period’s most popular literary genres: socially conscious poems of protest. As a poem of protest, “The Song of the Shirt” draws attention to the poor living conditions of the working class through its battered protagonist—the Seamstress—and petitions its rich audience to take note of and improve the lot of their lower-class citizens.
As a grim and imploring poem to the rich, “The Song of the Shirt” marked a shift in Hood’s writing career. As a professional writer, Hood commercially wrote in a number of different genres and media. Much of Hood’s writing career—and subsequent popularity—entailed writing morbidly comedic poems featuring such grotesque topics as bodily dismemberment, suicide, and murder.
However, it was the socially conscious poetry written near the end of Hood’s life that ultimately became his legacy. Hood’s contemporary and famed novelist William Makepeace Thackeray praised “The Song of the Shirt” as “the finest Unlock all 25 pages of this Study Guide Plus, gain access to 8,900+ more expert-written Study Guides. Including features:
