Product Description
This title has fewer than 24 printed text pages. Bark Kathleen Sunk By A Whale is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Thomas H. Jenkins is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Thomas H. Jenkins then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Formatting Problem
Doesn't appear to be properly formatted for the standard Kindle.Lines at the bottom of pages are lost with no 'scroll' ability. ... Read more

Product Description
First published in 1850 and considered some of the finest love lyrics in the English language, Sonnets from the Portuguese comprise 44 interlocking poems that Elizabeth Barrett Browning composed for her husband, Robert Browning.This wonderful illustrated edition includes 22 additional works as well. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

No line breaks
Line breaks don't show up--successive lines run together, which is bad formatting in general and absolutely unacceptable for poetry. The formatting needs to be fixed.

A wonderful work of art!
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

This magical collection of verse was written by the incomparable Elizabeth Barrett during her courtship with Robert Browning. It speaks of a love so deep and yearning to be expressed that it has been acclaimed by each and every generation since it was first published in 1850.

This is one of the greatest works of the English language, and quite possibly *the* great poetry every penned in English. Give your heart and your soul a treat, and read this wonderful work of art!

(Review of Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

formatting = no stars
The formatting of this is horrible.Amazon says it was formatted to read on the PC as well as the Dx, it's completely untrue because the format is the same on my Kindle as it is on my PC.The document is filled with XXIVII, XI, XL, etc. as it's "formatting."It's not worth the download, even if it's free.

A true classic
As far as poetry goes, Elizabeth Barrett Browning should be included as required reading. Formatting is not conducive to poetry, but I didn't find that it was so horrible you couldn't read it. It's good if you just want to get the gist of it.

You get what you pay for
It was free, so I downloaded it.You get what you pay for.The formatting is awful.Whoever formatted this needs to remember that poetry needs to be formatted as poetry, or it is just prose with some capital letters thrown in.This edition reads like a novel, not as a collection of poems.Find another edition and pay the buck or two for it -- it will be worth it.Now I need to figure out how to get this stinker off my Kindle download list...If I could give this no stars, I would, but I have to give it something. ... Read more

Product Description
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a prolific writer and reviewer in the Victorian period, and in her lifetime, her reputation as a poet was at least as great as that of her husband, poet Robert Browning. Some of her poetry has been noted in recent years for strong feminist themes, but the poems for which Elizabeth Barrett Browning is undoubtedly best know are Sonnets from the Portuguese.

Written for Robert Browning, who had affectionately nicknamed her his "little Portuguese," the sequence is a celebration of marriage, and of one of the most famous romances of the nineteenth century. Recognized for their Victorian tradition and discipline, these are some of the most passionate and memorable love poems in the English language.There are forty-four poems in the collection, including the very beautiful sonnet, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."
... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Nice looking book
I was pleasantly surprised when I looked at this book.The cover is very attractive as is the layout and wording inside.It makes a very nice gift or a nice addition to ones own library.

Time For Romance
You couldn't make this stuff up... well, maybe you could, but strictly for the Harlequin Romance market. Famous poet and man about London Robert Browning reads a poem by Elizabeth Barrett, a girl he never met... mainly because nobody else ever did either, since she lives in her bedroom in Emily Dickinson-style seclusion, in her case as an invalid, lifelong victim of some Victorianly-obscure wasting disease, under the care of a tyrannically possessive, somewhat demented father... and falls in love with her at long distance. Being who he is, Browning manages to wangle an interview, then further meetings, until, inevitably, he and this strange, ethereally beautiful (in Browning's eyes, at least) bedridden woman, six years his senior, fall in love. Browning knows he must spirit this creature away and possess her for his own, a challenge for which he must enlist the assistance of others of her (not entirely unsympathetic) family members, because of the father. Barrett senior, it seems, descended from a family of West Indian plantation owners, is possessed of the notion that none of his offspring should ever marry. The reason: he suspects his bloodline to be tainted by the tarbrush of slave ancestry somewhere along the line, and therefore not fit to be perpetuated.

Not to be so easily put off, Browning arranges an abduction/elopement, spiriting "Ba" (his pet name for Elizabeth) out of the paternal tower in which she has been imprisoned for years, gets the two of them married on the fly before her father even tumbles to what has happened, and the couple decamp to Italy and the British expat community there, where they continue to spout poetry while living happily ever after, becoming in due time the darlings of the international high cultural set, Elizabeth even managing to have a darling son at age 43. Or approximately ever after. They did have some score of good years together, until Ba, who really was ill with something, finally died at age sixty, and her heartbroken husband took their son back to be educated in England and never married again.

The kicker here, though, comes after the Brownings have been living some months of connubial bliss in Italy, when Robert happens to discover a secret collection of beautiful love sonnets among his wife's personal effects, and asks her what they might be. She confesses to him that during those months of meetings in her Wimpole Street bedroom, when all they did was talk, she had secretly fallen in love with him already, and was consoling her fantasies during his absences by writing secret love poems to him. Browning was flabbergasted, insisting that she ought to publish. The poems are indeed beautiful, thought by some to be EBB's best work, the most famous among them being the one that includes the lines "How do I love thee? / Let me count the ways..." Ba resists; for her, the poetry is too personal to expose to the public gaze. Robert comes up, accordingly, with a solution. Publish under a pseudonym or false title, one artfully chosen to misdirect authorship from herself, at least for awhile.

As it happens, EBB was herself somewhat dark and exotic in appearance. The tarbrush, perhaps? Whatever the case, another pet name of Robert's for her was, accordingly, "Portugese." Ultimately, they decided to publish the collection under EBB's name, but as "Sonnets From the Portugese," the implication being that the poems were not authored by EBB, but merely translated from a foreign tongue. The ploy worked, more or less, and the rest is history.

EBB's poetry shows great talent and flair, her perhaps most ambitious work being an experimental novel,"Aurora Leigh," written entirely in poetic verse. It is not a complete success, not because the poetry was bad; it isn't. Rather, a reading will show that there are some aspects of novel plot construction that are bound to present problems that the poetic tool kit simply lacks the appropriate tools to overcome. "Sonnets From the Portugese," however, is a perfect poetic gem.

A wonderful work of art!
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

This magical collection of verse was written by the incomparable Elizabeth Barrett during her courtship with Robert Browning. It speaks of a love so deep and yearning to be expressed that it has been acclaimed by each and every generation since it was first published in 1850.

This is one of the greatest works of the English language, and quite possibly *the* great poetry every penned in English. Give your heart and your soul a treat, and read this wonderful work of art!

(Review of Sonnets from the Portuguese: A Celebration 0f Love by Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

Beatiful Poems
I read this poems when I was about 16- 17 years old. Now in a age of 50 I still adore them. And I have performed them a lot of times. They are just lovely.

A Wonderful Introduction to a Talented Poet
This is a wonderful collection of poetry by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, telling the story of her meeting Robert Browning and how she discovered her love for him, and his love for her.The introduction to this volume is especially helpful, in that it gives a brief summary of her life before she met and Browning, so that one can follow the narrative fairly easily.Some of the references in the poems are a bit obscure, so it would have been nice if there were notes accompyaning them, but on the whole this is a very nice introduction to a talented poet. ... Read more

Product Description
A BEAUTIFUL HALLMARK EDITION OF THE CLASSIC ... Read more

Product Description
Publisher: New York, Frederick A. Stokes companyPublication date: 1892Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

Product Description
The book has no illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website (GeneralBooksClub.com). You can also preview excerpts of the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Publisher: Boston ; New York : Houghton Mifflin; Publication date: 1900; Subjects: Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

book printing review
The works of Ms Browning are beautiful, but don't get this edition. The print type looks like it was reproduced on a bad photocopy machine. I was very disappointed. ... Read more

Product Description
Aurora Leigh, now available in the first critically edited and fully annotated edition for almost a century, is the foremost example of the mid-nineteenth century poem of contemporary life. It is an amazing verse novel which provides a panoramic view of the early Victorian age in London. The dominant presence in the work however, is the narrator Aurora Leigh, as she develops her ideas on art, love, God, the "Woman Question", and society. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

"O life! O poetry!"
I picked up an old paperback edition of this novel-in-verse at a book sale, on a whim, thinking primarily of the Elizabeth Barrett Browning who wrote "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." But that familiar chestnut didn't prepare me in the least for the poetic & intellectual pleasures of this remarkable work!

Aurora Leigh must in many ways be an idealized mask for the author -- but this is a genuine novel, not thinly disguised autobiography. Browning, through her first-person narrator Aurora, delves into the role of the educated woman in the Victorian world, the vital importance of poetry & art in nourishing both the soul & society, and the struggle to balance personal & public life in order to become a whole person.

While it's definitely a novel of ideas, intelligently argued & investigated, it's by no means dry or pedantic. From the first, we're given exquisite & shrewd psychological portraits of even minor characters, with complexity revealed in a few deft & precise lines. These characters live & breathe on the page! And the story is strong, a woman's Bildungsroman, as Aurora struggles to remain true to her poetic ideals while coping with the inevitable compromises demanded by the world.

Love is an important thread in this rich tapestry, but it's woven quite intricately, allowing for a detailed examination of love in all its permutations & startling power. For those who equate the Victorian with the overly prim & hypocritically prudish, there are surprises in store!

The blank verse itself is both flexible & strongly crafted, and its tone far more contemporary than you might imagine. At times it has an almost cinematic quality. I've found it a compulsively readable story, in fact, one that combines lyrical beauty with intellectual rigor -- and it will clearly reward many re-readings in the future.

Most highly recommended!
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning with new information
This is a thoroughly researched book, using new-found information, on the life of this enigmatic poet.She really was a remarkable woman, particularly in that time period; as was her equally remarkable husband, Robert Browning.The new information reveals a woman who shows unexpected strength, both physically and emotionally, that was completely antithetical to her adulthood at home, pre-marriage, as an invalid.Her father, also, emerges as more three-dimensional than the movie version and earlier books, depict him.Yes, he was a tyrant, but also capable of being charming and enjoying social events and family fun.All in all, if you want to know the real Mrs. Browning and her family, this is the book for you. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

As If Jane Eyre Were Written by Shakespeare
Having been brought up on the notion that Elizabeth Barrett Browning was the slighter and less-talented adjunct poet of her husband Robert, I was pleased to find I was wrong.

She's terrific.

This is a brilliant work, full of dazzling poetry and insights.

It's loaded with allusions and references (I read the Penguin edition; and the notes there run for many, many pages--and these barely skim the surface), but it is remarkably accessible and fun.

This is a work full of wisdom and unusual perspectives.Luminous and grand and down-to-earth all at once.Imagine Jane Eyre written by Shakespeare.

It's an education in Victorian (upper-middle-class) England, and also the Victorian English infatuation with Italy.It's also a biting and incisive feminist portrait, full of rebellion and self-discovery.

I strongly recommend it to anyone who likes poetry, or Victorian novels.

An amazing achievement
E.B.B. set out to outstrip Milton and does so in an amazingly original way.Aurora Leigh is a novel in blank verse that is actually longer than Paradise Lost!She combines the genre expectations for a woman writer--the novel--with an audacious bid for poetic immortality.The book tells a good story but it also works as a formidable reminder to her contemporary poets that the novel is taking over and poets must make sure that they are writing in the spirit of the age. ... Read more

Product Description
One of the leading poets of the nineteenth century, Elizabeth Barrett Browning had a profound influence on her contemporaries and on writers that followed her. This edition provides a rich and varied selection of Barrett Browning's poetry, including relatively neglected material from her early career and works never before included in editions of her poetry. The edition is comprehensively annotated and includes a critical introduction; detailed headnotes for each poem also provide the reader with a deep understanding of the historical, biographical, and literary contexts in which the poems were written.

The extensive appendices include reviews and criticism and material on factory reform and slavery, as well as religion and the Italian Question. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

One great and memorable poem justifies a life - work
Reading through this volume I find it difficult to become deeply engaged. Something in the archaic, quaint language of much of the poetry deters.
Yet there is a poem, the poem of all the anthologies that is a great and memorable one, one that justifies a life- work.
" How do I love thee , Let me count the ways" is one of the most beautiful and inspiring love- poems ever written.

Some of the best love poetry ever written
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry, especially the "Sonnets from the Portuguese," is beautiful, intelligent, and honest love poetry. Anyone who has experienced the doubts, fears, and transformation of love will recognize the truth of the poet's struggle to trust and to love. ... Read more

Product Description
Often regarded as a romantic heroine in the Victorian era, Browning was no damsel in distress. She defines and brings to her poetry an unsentimental yet feminine perspective of the values and society of her time. ... Read more

Product Description
A Riveting and brilliant work of biography. The story of two great English poets, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, whose work was immediately recognized and adored by their contemporaries, whose courtship ranks with the great love stories of all time -- and in whose marriage romance was not merely sustained but intensified.

We enter their story through the sealed Victorian world of the Barretts of Wimpole Street: Elizabeth, at thirty-nine, a poet of international fame, a child prodigy who had grown to be a middle-aged spinster, a woman for whom romantic love seemed not to be possible, confined by illness, morphine, and the tyranny of her father, scion of rich Jamaican slaveholders, rum and sugar traders.

It is to this fortress that Robert Browning, already an admired young poet and playwright, already a devotee of Elizabeth's, lays siege. ("I love your verses," he had written Elizabeth in his first letter to her, long before they met. "I love your verses with all my heart -- and I love you too.") And miraculously Elizabeth let life in.

Julia Markus chronicles their extraordinary courtship, their marriage in secret (Browning to Elizabeth: "How you have dared and done all this ... for my only sake?"), and their radiant honeymoon in Italy.

Markus shows us how the political events of the times inspired the great dramatic monologues of Robert's middle years and how Italy's stormy reunification inspired Elizabeth's later work.

We come to see Elizabeth as an artist with a fierce and final confidence in poetry and its effect on the poets' lives. We see husband and wife celebrate the birth of their son, Robert Wiedemann "Pen" Barrett Browning (Browning to her sisters: "I sate by [Elizabeth] as much as I was allowed, and I shall never forget what I saw, tho' I cannot speak about it").

We see them among their artist/writer friends: in London with Tennyson, Thackeray, Rossetti, and others; in Rome with William Story, the American lawyer, poet, sculptor; with Harriet Hosmer, the stonecutter, who was one of the models for Aurora Leigh; with Charlotte Cushman, the American actress, who held readings of Elizabeth's novel in verse. We see Elizabeth in Paris meeting her heroine George Sand, whose society of socialists and theatrical types Robert described as "ragged Red."

We come to understand Elizabeth's dependence on the ever-present drug in her life ("I should not be alive except by help of my morphine") and her constant battle with depression. And we see Elizabeth, encouraged by a woman with whom she was infatuated, move from interest to obsession with spiritualism, a cause that became the only source of serious dissension between the Brownings.

We follow the course of their rich marriage, from the beginning when each saw the other as a brilliant poet, a compassionate and strangely similar heart, through the years in which they discovered each other's differences, each remaining a complex and thrilling human being to the other.

To tell their story, Markus for the first time makes use of much of Elizabeth's unpublished correspondence, amid a wealth of other documents. She delves fully into the Brownings' Creole background and shows how it affected their lives and their work (Elizabeth was the first of the Jamaican Barretts to be born in England in many generations).

Brilliantly interweaving the Brownings' own words with her authentic and perceptive narrative, Julia Markus brings these two great poets -- their marriage, their work, their times -- alive as never before. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Stranger Truths Than Poetry
Those who recall the Barretts of Wimpole Street may remember a pairing of upper echelon Victorian poets, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, who lived a life together as strange as anything in their poetry. So strange, in fact, as to have rather fallen out of history, as their fashion faded, as if too big or awkward for the flow of it. Today the fame of the Brownings, in life and in verse, is no longer common currency in the popular fancy or other than among specialists, but in their day they were the talk of the town, in London and Florence, at least, and deservedly so.

In brief, their story ran like this: She was the London home-bound invalid daughter of a father who, from a Jamaican slave-owning planter family, eccentrically refused to let any of his many offspring marry and bear children, on threat of disinheritance, apparently, it is suggested, because of a suspicion of dark slave-blood in his family tree and a fear of perpetuating it. Her sequestered illness, whatever it may have been, never adequately diagnosed, apparently, left her with nothing worthwhile in her fallow young life but an urge to express her spirit through a marvellous poetic gift, which, magnified by the mystery swirling around her personal life, made her famous enough to attract the infatuated attention of another poet, Robert Browning, who thus fell in love with her at second hand, sought out and courted her in secrecy, won her heart and eloped with her to Italy, where they lived out their marriage safe from her wealthy and powerful father's wrath. In Italy both their love and their poetry flourished, bringing fame, the fellowship of the Euro-American cultural cogniscenti of the age and, eventually, a living, to the pair of them, and in due time a beautiful healthy son to dote upon. Theirs was, in short, a love story for the ages, with perils, pathos and passion enough and to spare. In other words, even in Victorian times, you couldn't have scripted such stuff as this, at least not credibly.

Not that life was all lollipops and roses for the Brownings, of course. They lived through all the painful European political disruptions of the Revolution of 1848, and she, as lady poets seem so prodigally inclined to do, died young, in her mid-fifties in 1861, of her mysterious lifelong illness. Widower Robert Browning went back to England after that, trying, unsuccessfully to make a proper Englishman out of their "Italian" son, who expatriated himself back to Italy as soon as his father died.

The story is a fascinating one, which this book handles admirably, for all that I am ill qualified to comment much upon either the Brownings or their poetry, he famous mainly for his DRAMATIS PERSONAE and she for her SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGESE and her AURORA LEIGH, a Victorian romance written entirely in iambic pentameter, making it the longest poem in the English language. It was in fact AURORA LEIGH which drew me into a curiosity about the Brownings, merely in the course of doing some research on Emily Dickinson, who owned that book as one of her particular favorites. It was a sidetrack, but an interesting and rewarding one, and I can highly recommend the book.

Dares and Does draw you in
A wonderful biography of a marriage between two genius poets, Dared and Done drew me in with such force and speed that I was almost glad of being ill myself so as to have an excuse to stay in bed and finish it. Markus has managed to convey her own excitement at relating such an intriguing story and did what a good author should do - made me want to delve into these poets' lives and their poetry even more.

Some of the speculation I did not agree with such as EBB's father not wanting his children to marry because of possible African blood. The birth of Pen Browning should have eradicated that concern. We may never understand the strange, cruel elder Barrett and fortunately, Dared and Done doesn't hinge on the theory. I did want to know more about the conniving Sophia Eckley - her cause of death for example, since she played such a huge role in the Browning marriage. I was also curious about EBB's illness - oddly, we never do get a diagnosis - only her maintenance cure of morphine and ether.

Remarkably,EBB had the greater reputation as a poet during the Barrett-Browning marriage with Robert Browning for many years being considered the lesser poet. That can make for trouble in the most loving of marriages and re-witnessing the devotion these two gifted poets demonstrated repeatedly is both exceptional and inspiring.

A Romantic Story
The romantic story of 2 poets who fell in love at mid-life, married, escaped to Italy, and lived happily for 15 years until Elizabeth's death. The author discusses the lives of the poets amongst their friends, acquaintances, other writers, & artists in Italy where living was less expensive and the climate more favorable. There are many cute stories about their son Pen and how the couple disagreed over various aspects of his unbringing. Also touched upon are the previous generations of both the Barretts and the Brownings and their history in Jamaica. Besides learning about the the Brownings, this book gives you a good feel of what life was like in the middle 19th century. Lots of B&W illustrations throughout the book.

A very nice bio into the life and poetry of immortal lovers
The Brownings hold a special place in my world, especially EBB. "Sonnets From The Portuguese" speaks with the eloquence, dignity and passion of the human ideal behind the flaws and veils of life and lovers (both RB and EBB's poetry are available on disc). Especially the last ten sonnets. EBB wrote not only about love and lovers, but about the human condition. She lived an insulated life yet was by nature a worldly and sophisticated soul. RB struggled with his inability to support his family, living off of EBB's inheritance annuity. Through this biography I was better able to appreciate his humaness and struggle, though I am still inclined toward EBB and her poetry. They were the sum of many contradictions, the big one being that they were so English (formal and proper) yet Bohemian in their liberal thinking. Both lovers and artists in the same household, in the same relationship, in the same struggle to survive and create (they do remind me of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's struggle and life together). While the book probably told the whole story, at least as much as a biographer can research and reveal, I still felt something lacking. I wanted the story to go on a little longer, a little deeper. I knew quite a bit about EBB before I began the book, I learned much more about her heritage and conflicts by reading this biography. My appreciation is much greater. It's a shame that we Moderns let so much of our heritage lay dormat (literaturewise) in the vaults of the "old days". To sip and savour the lives and poetry of the past is something we should cherish and celebrate. This book points in that direction. I strongly recommend this to all lovers of RB & EBB and poetry.

Dared...and well done
I picked up this book out of a desire to learn more about the lives and love of the Brownings.I had merely intended to skan through the pages, expecting yet another boring biography, but I was surprised.

Ms. Markushad done a wonderful job in making the characters come to life for me, andshe had achieved this without adding a trace of fiction. Her extensiveresearch blended in so well with her writing that I had no troublefollowing along.In fact, I found it so interesting that I ended upreading the entire book, from beginning to end.

I can only hope that theromance of Robert and Elizabeth will forever live through this brilliantbiography! ... Read more

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Indulge Yourself with the best classic literature on Your PDA. Navigate easily to any novel from Table of Contents or search for the words or phrases. Author's biography and stories in the trial version.

Customer Reviews (2)

A wonderful collection of poetry by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Includes 'He Giveth His Beloved Sleep' (Illustrated), Aurora Leigh, Sonnets from the Portuguese,How Do I Love Theeand more. Published by MobileReference (mobi)

The book brings together the best of Elizabeth Barret Browning. It is a wonderful, emotional book. I enjoy poetry, especially good kind. This is it. I read this poems when I was about 17 years old and I still adore them. They are just lovely.

Wonderful and moving
Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Includes 'He Giveth His Beloved Sleep' (Illustrated), Aurora Leigh, Sonnets from the Portuguese,How Do I Love Theeand more. Published by MobileReference (mobi)

I enjoy Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poems very much. They contain many beautifully worded expressions of the author's deep love and blazing passion. I see these poems as a satisfying dose of romance for a woman, and a window into any woman's heart for a man. ... Read more

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Quality Classics

We specialize in creating hard to find, high quality, classic books optimized for the Kindle.

Sick of spelling errors, weird characters, or a lack of pictures in illustrated books? Well we know how you feel. We always have the highest quality books.All of our books are formatted and reviewed by an actual human for the Kindle, and always 99 cents.

To find more of our books search "quality classics" in Amazon. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a biographical survey, as well as, a study of Barrett Browning's poetry & its critical reception, and an assessment of her influence on later poets.. This book examines the complex 'myths' which are associated with Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The authors offer re-readings of her life and work, particularly in dispelling the myth of the ailing invalid poet-recluse and instead showing her to be one of the great intellectuals of her day. The text situates Browning within broader historical, political and cultural contexts than have yet been examined enabling a better understanding of her poetry and paints the portrait of a fine and innovative poet, an intellectual and an astute political thinker.For readers interested Browning or Victorian poetry ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Fascinating Read
This is a really lucid and engrossing guide to the poet and her times. The book makes an excellent job of weaving the verse into the wider historical and political context of 19th England. Detailed readings of her work help to explore and sometimes explode the myths that have collected around Barrett Browning, offering a portrait of the artist as a free thinker whose ideas still have the power to question the dominant ideologies of our time. Although theoretically informed, the book does not get mired in long expositions of Foucault or Derrida but rather sticks closely to a detailed account of the work and its contexts. The book is essential reading for anyone studying 19th century English literature and will be of general interest to anyone who would like to know more about the poet. ... Read more

Product Description
In 1846 Elizabeth Barrett rose from an invalid's bed to elope to Italy with Robert Browning.The secret courtship of the two poets--their long correspondence and their meetings in the shadow of Elizabeth's tyrannical father--has become one of the most celebrated romances of literary history. Based on a more intense study of the letters than has ever been attempted before, this book gives a fresh account of the powerful myth of Browning's chivalrous rescue and Barrett's miraculous recovery, examines anew the character and motivation of the three principals, and demonstrates what and important part the letters play in the interpretation of both poet's work. ... Read more