This book advances an exploration of the form of unacted drama in the 19th century and the difference between unacted drama and enacted drama. It carries out a critical investigation of why that form exists in its curiously introspective, lyrical shape, and why it exists at all. By directly confronting the unacted dramas of Byron, Shelley, Browning, Clough, Arnold, Swinburne and Hardy, the author advances a theoretical argument concerning unacted drama as a literary genre while at the same time illuminating the texts which have either been neglected, or considered in other terms.