AURORA LEIGH
and other poems
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
edited and with an introduction by Professor Cora Kaplan
'Aurora Leigh deserves to be read as widely and treated as seriously now as in 1856. Not only is its historical perspective of enormous interest, it also embodies. like all enduring literature, truth that transcends historical particulars'
Guardian
Aurora Leigh is Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tour de force, her novel in verse. It describes Aurora's successful rebellion against her conventional Victorian English childhood; to travel in Italy, find love, and pursue her career as a writer.
This volume also includes some of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's short political poems, and the influential introduction to Aurora Leigh written by Professor Cora Caplan.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
was born in 1806, the eldest of twelve children. Precociously intelligent, Elizabeth wrote verses from childhood, read widely and studied Greek, Latin, French and Italian with her brothers' tutor. Her early works includingThe Battle of the Marathon, An Essay on the Mind with Other Poems and Prometheus Bound and Miscellaneous Poems were published anonymously. A serious illness in 1821 prefigured a lifelong physical frailty.
In 1837 the Barretts settled at 50 Wimpole Street. A year later The Seraphim and Other Poems was published under her own name, establishing her literary reputation in Britain and America. Her prose criticism was published in The Athenaeum. Her reputation was further enhanced by the publication of Poems in 1844, which were read and admired by Robert Browning. His correspondence with Elizabeth Barrett led to increasing attachment and, eventually, a secret marriage on 12th September 1846. Elizabeth's father had forbidden any of his children to marry, and never forgave her.
Over the next 15 years, Italy was home to the Brownings, and Elizabeth died in Florence in 1861.
Cora Kaplan
is Professor of English at the University of Southampton. A specialist in Victorian women's writing, she has also taught at the University of Sussex and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, USA. Her books include Salt and Bitter and Good: Three Centuries of English and American Women Poets, Sea Changes: Essays on Culture and Feminism, and,with David Glover Genders (Routledge). A new collection of her essays - Victoriana: Histories, Fictions, Criticism is published by Edinburgh University Press in 2001.