Aurora Leigh: A Norton Critical Edition

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Book Overview

The text is accompanied by both explanatory annotations and textual notes.

"Backgrounds and Contexts" includes thirty letters or letter excerpts by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning that trace Aurora Leigh's inception, evolution, and publication.

Seven contemporary documents--on the "woman question," prostitution, socialism, and poetic theory--place the text historically.

"Criticism" collects twenty-five assessments of Aurora Leigh from the period 1899-1993.

A wide range of opinion is provided by George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Ellen Moers, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Angela Leighton, Deirdre David, Dorothy Mermin, and Margaret Reynolds, among others.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393962989
• ISBN13: 9780393962987
• Release Date: November 1995
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 584 Pages
• Weight: 1.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.1" x 8.4"
• Grade Range: Grades 9 to 12

Customer Reviews

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.