Arthur Hugh Clough is one of the most undervalued Victorian poets. His importance is now being recognized, and the New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse assigns him his rightful position as a major poet. While an undergraduate at Balliol and a Fellow of Oriel, Clough wrote a series of intensely personal diaries, which throw light not only on his own development as a poet, but on the Oxford education of the time and the religious sensibility of the early Victorian era.

Having been influenced by Thomas Arnold at Rugby, Clough felt the attraction at Oxford of the charisma of Newman. He was torn between the liberal and the catholic view of Christianity and began to raise the questions which led him eventually to agnosticism. In lighter moments the Diaries show Clough boating on the river and walking with Matthew Arnold through the countryside immortalized by The Scholar Gypsy.