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This volume in the 21st Century Oxford Authors series offers students and readers a comprehensive selection of the work of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861). Accompanied by full scholarly apparatus, this authoritative edition enables students to study Barrett Browning's work
within the rich context of her life and writing career. The revaluation of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's work by feminist scholars has made her an established author in university syllabuses in Britain and in America. Yet the reception of Barrett Browning as a writer within an explicitly female tradition has tended to limit the appreciation of her wider
contribution to English literary culture in the nineteenth century, just as her popular image as a ringleted romantic heroine served sentimentally to eclipse her role as a literary pioneer. This edition complements or corrects these emphases by being the first edition dedicated to witnessing the
progress and growth of the poet's creative direction--from her juvenilia through to her major achievements and beyond. The selection of works presented here appear in the order in which they were originally published, enabling students and readers to experience the contours of Barrett Browning's poetic career. Thus, following selections from published juvenilia, The Battle of Marathon (1820) and 'An Essay on Mind'
and Other Poems (1826) and from 'Prometheus Bound' and Miscellaneous Poems (1833), there are more extensive selections from 'The Seraphim' and Other Poems (1838), from Poems 1844 and from Poems 1850 including the full text of Sonnets from the Portuguese. Substantial excerpts from Casa Guidi Windows
(1851) is followed by the full text of Aurora Leigh (1857) and by selections from the posthumous Last Poems (1862). These individual sections are supplemented by careful selections (also chronologically ordered) from the correspondence, including the courtship letters with Robert Browning, and,
where applicable, from poetry unpublished in the nineteenth century. Explanatory notes and commentary are included, to enhance the study, understanding, and enjoyment of these works, and the edition includes an Introduction to the life and works of Barrett Browning, and a Chronology.
List of contents
- Introduction
- Chronology
- A Note on the Selection and Ordering
- Part I: EARLY WORKS AND THE BARRETT FAMILY WRITINGS (1820-33)
- From The Battle of Marathon (1820)
- From (unpublished) 'Fragment of An Essay on Woman' (1822)
- From An Essay on Mind (1826)
- To My Father on His Birth-Day (1826)
- Song ('Weep as if you thought of laughter') (1826)
- Verses to my Brother (1826)
- Letter to Hugh Stuart Boyd (1828)
- Diary 1831-2
- From Preface to translation of Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound (1833)
- From translation of Prometheus Bound (1833)
- A True Dream (1833)
- PART II: THE SERAPHIM AND OTHER POEMS (1838), CORRESPONDENCE 1841-5
- From Preface
- From The Seraphim
- From The Poet's Vow
- From The Romaunt of Margret
- The Deserted Garden
- Death of Bro (1840), Letters (1841-45)
- SECTION III: POEMS (1844)
- Dedication: To My Father
- From Preface
- Past and Future
- Irreparableness
- Grief
- Tears
- Substitution
- Work and Contemplation
- Letter to John Kenyon
- from A Drama of Exile
- An Apprehension
- To George Sand: A Recognition
- The Soul's Expression
- from The Lost Bower
- The Lady's Yes
- The Cry of the Children
- Lady Geraldine's Courtship
- SECTION IV: The Courtship Correspondence (1845-6)
- From the letters of EBB and Robert Browning (January 1845- April 1846
- SECTION V: POEMS 1850
- Sonnets from the Portuguese
- A Denial (1856)
- The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point
- A Reed
- A Sabbath Morning at Sea
- A Woman's Shortcomings
- A Man's Requirements
- The Mask
- SECTION VI: CASA GUIDI WINDOWS (1851)
- Advertisement to the First Edition
- from Part I
- from Part II
- SECTION VII: AURORA LEIGH (1856)
- Dedication
- First Book
- Second Book
- Third Book
- Fourth Book
- Fifth Book
- Sixth Book
- Seventh Book
- Eighth Book
- Ninth Book
- SECTION VIII: LAST POEMS (1862)
- Bianca Among the Nightingales
- Mother and Poet
- A Musical Instrument
- Lord Walter's Wife
- Died
- My Heart and I
- The Best Thing in the World
- NOTES
About the author
Dr Josie Billington is a specialist in Victorian Literature who has published widely on nineteenth-century fiction and poetry. Her publications include
Faithful Realism (2002), (ed)
Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters (2006),
Eliot's Middlemarch (2008),
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Shakespeare (2012), (ed)
Margaret Oliphant Novellas (2013). She is also engaged in interdisciplinary medical humanities research in the area of reading and health, with
Is Literature Healthy? (OUP, 2016).
Professor Philip Davis is author of
Volume 8:1830 -- 1880: The Victorians in The Oxford English Literary History series (OUP, 2002). His other works include
Sudden Shakespeare (1997),
Shakespeare Thinking (2007), and two biographies,
Bernard Malamud: A Writer's Life (OUP,2007) and
The Transferred Life of George Eliot (OUP, 2017). He is general editor of a new series from Oxford University Press, 'The Literary Agenda', on the future of literary studies in the twenty-first century, contributing his own volume
Reading and The Reader (2013) building on
The Experience of Reading (1991) and
Real Voices: On Reading (1997). He is editor of
The Reader magazine.
