In Modern Love and Aurora Leigh periodicals and contemporary fiction are commonplace features of a quotidian world within which modern erotic relationships unfold. Poetry, too, as prior chapters indicate, routinely appeared in newspapers and magazines, where it was read alongside fiction, news, and other prose forms. If Aurora Leigh cites Dickens and draws on Jane Eyre for its plot, novelists likewise incorporated contemporary poetry into their creations, suggesting why it is important to look at these multiple print forms together.

Two of the most widely anthologized Victorian theories of poetry today are “On Some of the Characteristics of Modern Poetry,” by Arthur Henry Hallam, first published in Englishman's Magazine (August, 1831), and “What is Poetry?” by John Stuart Mill, published under the pseudonym “Antiquus” in the Monthly Repository (January, 1833).