Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

A "nuanced and insightful" (New Statesman) portrait of Britain's most famous female poet, a woman who invented herself and defied her times. "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." With these words, Elizabeth Barrett Browning has come down to us as a romantic heroine, a recluse controlled by a domineering father and often overshadowed by her husband, Robert Browning. But behind the melodrama lies a thoroughly modern figure whose extraordinary life is an electrifying study in self-invention. Born in 1806, Barrett Browning lived in an age when women could not attend a university, own property after marriage, or vote. And yet she seized control of her private income, defied chronic illness and disability, became an advocate for the revolutionary Italy to which she eloped, and changed the course of cultural history. Her late-in-life verse novel masterpiece, Aurora Leigh, reveals both the brilliance and originality of her mind, as well as the challenges of being a woman writer in the Victorian era. A feminist icon, high-profile activist for the abolition of slavery, and international literary superstar, Barrett Browning inspired writers as diverse as Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, Oscar Wilde, and Virginia Woolf. Two-Way Mirror is the first biography of Barrett Browning in more than three decades. With unique access to the poet's abundant correspondence, "astute, thoughtful, and wide-ranging guide" (Times [UK]) Fiona Sampson holds up a mirror to the woman, her art, and the art of biography itself.

Provides analysis of the most frequently studied poems in literature courses. Contains author biography (if attributed), poem text, poem summary, themes, style, historical context, critical overview, and criticism.

Provides analysis of the most frequently studied poems in literature courses. Contains author biography (if attributed), poem text, poem summary, themes, style, historical context, critical overview, and criticism.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61) was one of the most important poets of the nineteenth century and has recently undergone a major critical reappraisal. In this new study, Simon Avery examines a range of her poems, both well known and less familiar, drawn from across her career, in order to explore the concern with the search for a meaningful home which underpins much of her writing. In a series of interrelated chapters on Barrett Browning's religious poetry, love poetry, political poetry, and her major work, Aurora Leigh, he considers the ways in which the speakers and protagonists of her poems constantly search for a place of security and stability even though this often seems finally unattainable. Attention is also given to Barrett Browning's own search for a home in relation to inherited poetic models and traditions, and her establishment of an often radical poetics.

Given here are 100 "representative letters" of Browning, plus examples of Mitford's correspondence. Divided into 13 sections, each with its own preface, the book has a seviceable structure; annotations, chronologies, and bibliographies of principal works provide scholarly backup. Readers will be taken by Browning's development from shut-in to woman of letters; Mitford, 20 years her senior, skeptical and earthy, was both confidant and devil's advocate through an 18-year relationship (1836-1854) that truly mirrored the ethical, moral, and literary issues of the era.