Women have occupied no small share in the literary history of the past sixty years, although it is in fiction that their most enduring triumphs have been secured. The most popular women poets, next in order to Mrs Browning, have been Eliza Cook and Jean Ingelow. =Eliza Cook (1818-1889)= wrote for the most part the kind of verses which would now be rejected by the editor of the Poet's Corner of a provincial newspaper. She would be little more than a vague memory, were it not for "The Old Arm-Chair"; but she has other claims to consideration. In the forties and the fifties _Eliza Cook's Journal_ was one of the most prominent publications of the day, and it did much for the cause of literature and philanthropy. =Jean Ingelow (1820-1897)= survived, as did Eliza Cook, to see her verse well-nigh forgotten, and yet it is stated that two hundred thousand copies of her poems have been sold in America alone. Miss Ingelow, who was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, and died in London, will live in anthologies by her ballad, "High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire," by a song in "Supper at the Mill," and by sundry short poems. A certain brighter and more humorous kind of verse had its beginnings with Thomas Hood and the author of "The Ingoldsby Legends." =Thomas Hood (1798-1845)= has endeared himself to the whole reading world by his "Song of the Shirt" (1844); and his "Dream of Eugene Aram" (1829) is not less familiar. But in addition to this he had an abundance of wit and drollery side by side with pathos and tenderness, which will always make a splendid tradition and a great inspiration. Hood was a journalist. His prototype, =Richard Harris Barham (1788-1845)=, was an Anglican clergyman. His pseudonym of Thomas Ingoldsby calls up memories of some of the quaintest and drollest verse ever written. "The Ingoldsby Legends" were first contributed to _Bentley's Miscellany_, and afterwards collected in volumes. "The Jackdaw of Rheims" is the most popular. Barham's once successful novel, "My Cousin Nicholas," is now all but forgotten. The most famous successors of Hood and Barham have been Calverley and Mr Austin Dobson. =Charles Stuart Calverley (1831-1884)= wrote "Fly Leaves" and "Verses and Translations." Mr Dobson has published, in addition to many valuable prose works, the exquisite "Vignettes in Rhyme" and "Proverbs in Porcelain," which, with Mr Andrew Lang's "Ballades in Blue China," form a dainty contribution to the lighter literature of the epoch.