Aurora Leigh and Other Poems

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Robert Glorney Bolton (Editor), Julia Bolton Holloway (Editor)

Overview

Aurora Leigh (1856), Elizabeth Barrett Browning's epic novel in blank verse, tells the story of the making of a woman poet, exploring 'the woman question', art and its relation to politics and social oppression. The texts in this selection are based in the main on the earliest printed versions of the poems. What Edgar Allan Poe called 'her wild and magnificent genius' is abundantly in evidence. In addition to Aurora Leigh, this volume contains poetry from the several volumes of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's published poetry from 1826 to 1862, including Casa Guidi Windows (1851), Songs for the Ragged Schools of London (1854) and the British Library manuscript text of the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese' (1846) which records her courtship with Robert Browning.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140434125
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/28/1996
Series:	Penguin Classics Series
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	139,799
Product dimensions:	5.11(w) x 7.78(h) x 1.22(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) - née Barrett English poet, was the wife of Robert Browning and the most respected and successful woman poet of the Victorian period.

Table of Contents

Aurora Leigh and Other Poems - Elizabeth Barrett Browning Edited by John Robert Glorney Bolton and Julia Bolton Holloway

Preface
Acknowledgments
Table of Dates
Further Reading
Aurora Leigh
From Essay on Mind, with Other Poems (1826)
Verses to My Brother
Stanzas on the Death of Lord Byron [1824]
Lines on the Portrait of the Widow of Riego
From Prometheus Bound, and Miscellaneous Poems (1833)
The Death-Bed of Teresa del Riego
The Cry of the Children (1843, 1844)
From Poems (1844)
Past and Future
To George Sand. A Desire
Lady Geraldine's Courtship
Crowned and Wedded [1840]
Wine of Cyprus
The Dead Pan
Caterina to Camoëns
The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point (1848, 1849, 1850)
From Poems (1850)
Flush or Faunus
Hiram Powers' Greek Slave
Hugh Stuart Boyd: His Blindness
Hugh Stuart Boyd: Legacies
Sonnets from the Portugese [1846]
Casa Guidi Windows (1851)
From Two Poems by Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning
A Plea for the Ragged Schools of London
From Poems Before Congress (1860)
Christmas Gifts
From Last Poems (1862)
The North and the South [1861]
Psyche Gazing on Cupid [1845]
Notes
Index of Titles
Index of First Lines

What People are Saying About This

Gardner Taplin

"This long narrative poem, of which Virginia Woolf said, '[Aurora Leigh] is the true daughter of her age,' was largely forgotten until the recent feminist movement...Aurora Leigh offers more hope to the aspirations of women than any other ...19th century imaginative [work]."

From the Publisher

"Her ardour and abundance, her brilliant descriptive powers, her shrewd and caustic humour infect us with her own enthusiasm. We laugh, we protest, we complain – it is absurd, it is impossible, we cannot tolerate this exaggeration a moment longer – but, nevertheless, we read to the end enthralled. What more can an author ask?"
—Virginia Woolf

Editorial Reviews

"Her ardour and abundance, her brilliant descriptive powers, her shrewd and caustic humour infect us with her own enthusiasm. We laugh, we protest, we complain – it is absurd, it is impossible, we cannot tolerate this exaggeration a moment longer – but, nevertheless, we read to the end enthralled. What more can an author ask?"
—Virginia Woolf

From the Publisher