Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Description

This volume in the 21st Century Oxford Authors series offers students an authoritative, comprehensive selection of the work of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861). The edition presents Barrett Browning's most celebrated works alongside lesser-known texts, and includes an Introduction, Chronology, and full commentary notes.

• Introduces students to the life and work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, one of the most important women poets of the nineteenth century
• Includes the full text of Sonnets from the Portuguese and Aurora Leigh
• An Introduction by the editors explores the life of Barrett-Browning as the context to her writing
• Poetry is interspersed with extracts from Barrett Browning's famous courtship correspondence, family correspondence, and her diaries
• Barrett Browning's work is presented in chronological order, allowing students to study her development and growth as a poet
• Includes a separate Chronology at the opening of the volume, which provides details of Barrett Browning's life, and the composition and publication of her works
• The poems and writings are presented free of annotation on the page, allowing students to encounter the original texts afresh
• Explanatory notes and commentary are located at the end of the book, providing students with a wealth of additional material and information that will enhance the understanding and enjoyment of these works
• An essential teaching resource, representing Barrett Browning's work in all its variety

About the Author(s)

Edited by Josie Billington, Deputy Director, Centre for Research into Reading, Information and Linguistic Systems, University of Liverpool, and Philip Davis, Director, Centre for Research into Reading, Information and Linguistic Systems, University of Liverpool

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.

Table 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

Reviews

"This volume is a comprehensive new edition of Elizabeth Barrett Brownings poetry that will prove indispensable for students and established scholars alike." - Sarah Parker, Modern Language Review

"Judiciously selected and introduced by two established experts in Victorian Literature, this Oxford edition helpfully frames works written throughout Elizabeth Barrett Browning's career with excerpts from her letters, diary, and prefaces. The most authoritative selected edition to appear since the 2010 five-volume complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, its accessible one-volume format and clearly annotated texts make it a valuable resource for students, scholars, libraries, and general readers, given the widespread critical and popular interest in Victorian England's most internationally influential woman poet. " - Marjorie Stone, Dalhousie University

"[This edition] will broaden the scope for the teaching of Barrett Browning's poetry … Extracts from 'The Seraphim' and 'Drama of Exile' will make it possible to study her religious poetry, a genre which has garnered renewed critical interest in Victorian poetry studies in the last five years … There are a number of strengths to the volume, particularly in relation to teaching. The opening piece is a spirited essay by the fourteen-year-old Barrett, which is an excellent introduction to the precocious and vivacious young poet … [the edition will] encourage students to read the letters in dialogue with the poems. At other points in the volume, there is a useful selection of letters providing a measure of context for Barrett Browning's poetry, such as letters illustrating her grief after the death of her brother in 1840." - Clara Dawson, Notes and Queries

"[T]he volume provides a solid selection of poems for the classroom and for scholars who wish to study poems as they were initially published." - Beverly Taylor, Victorian Review