The many friends and admirers who mourned the early death of Constance Naden would doubtless be surprised that it is her poetry, rather than her philosophical writings, that most interests scholars. However, despite the fact that Naden and her posthumous publicists, chief among them Dr. Robert Lewins, considered her poetry little more than a charming hobby to be set aside in favor of the promotion and elaboration of Lewins's doctrine of "Hylo-Idealism," she did attract considerable attention as a poet in her own time. The essayist and Liberal member of Parliament William Ewart Gladstone ranked her among the top eight women poets of the century (a list headed by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and excluding such luminaries as Felicia Hemans and L. E. L. [Letitia Elizabeth Landon]). Naden was one of the few writers of her time who drew praise from Oscar Wilde, and she was further distinguished when...