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Cover image of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Cover image of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Selected Poems

introduction by Margaret Forster

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Most of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry has been unavailable to new readers, in spite of a growing appreciation of her innovativeness as a poet—and it spite of her onvious importance for any feminist reading of nineteenth-century English poetry. With the publication of this book, a major portion of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's wok returns to print.

The poems selected here includ early verse published in 1826, when the poet was twenty, as well as the last poems she wrote before her death in 1861. Her religious verse appears alongside lively ballads, examples of her social-reforming and...

Most of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry has been unavailable to new readers, in spite of a growing appreciation of her innovativeness as a poet—and it spite of her onvious importance for any feminist reading of nineteenth-century English poetry. With the publication of this book, a major portion of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's wok returns to print.

The poems selected here includ early verse published in 1826, when the poet was twenty, as well as the last poems she wrote before her death in 1861. Her religious verse appears alongside lively ballads, examples of her social-reforming and political verse, and generous selections of her love poetry, including the whole of the Sonnets from the Portuguese.

The volume illustrates Elizabeth Barrett Browning's development as a poet and reveals her contribution to feminist literature. Innocent-seeming ballads, beloved in the Victorian period for their sweetness and condemned thereafter for their cloying sentimentality, here emerge as subversive articulations of the plight of women. "Few heard what Elizabeth Barrett Browning said [in her time]," Margaret Forster writes. "Today, with ears more finely attuned, we can hear her clearly."

Reviews

Reviews

The array of works offered is a rich one, from the religious to the romantic, the sentimental to the socially astute... In providing as representative a sample as possible without including the prefaces or extracts from the longer poems, Forster has succeeded admirably.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
5.125
x
7.875
Pages
352
ISBN
9780801837548
Table of Contents

Editor's Introduction
Note on the Text
Part I: From an Essay on Mind, With Other Poems (1826)
Chapter 1. To My Father on His Birthday
Chapter 2. Song
Chapter 3. The Dream
Part II: From Prometheus Bound And

Editor's Introduction
Note on the Text
Part I: From an Essay on Mind, With Other Poems (1826)
Chapter 1. To My Father on His Birthday
Chapter 2. Song
Chapter 3. The Dream
Part II: From Prometheus Bound And Miscellaneous Poems (1833)
Chapter 4. Epitaph
Chapter 5. The Image of God
Chapter 6. A Sea-Side Meditation
Chapter 7. Idols
Chapter 8. The Tempest
Part III: From the Seraphim, And Other Poems (1838)
Chapter 9. A True Dream
Chapter 10. Man and Nature
Chapter 11. The Deserted Garden
Chapter 12. The Sea-Mew
Chapter 13. A Sea-Side Walk
Chapter 14. My Doves
Chapter 15. Night and the Merry Man
Chapter 16. The Sleep
Chapter 17. The Romaunt of Margret
Chapter 18. A Romance of the Ganges
Part IV: From Poems (1844)
Chapter 19. De Proundis
Chapter 20. Past and Future
Chapter 21. Grief
Chapter 22. Tears
Chapter 23. Substitution
Chapter 24. Lady Geraldine's Courtship
Chapter 25. The Lost Bower
Chapter 26. Rime of the Duchess May
Chapter 27. The Lady's Yes
Chapter 28. Bertha in the Lane
Chapter 29. Loved Once
Chapter 30. Catarina to Camoens
Chapter 31. The Romance of the Swan's Nest
Chapter 32. The Cry of the Human
Chapter 33. The Cry of the Children
Chapter 34. The Poet and the Bird
Part V: From Poems
Chapter 35. A Sabbath Morning at Sea
Chapter 36. Human Life's Mystery
Chapter 37. Question and Answer
Chapter 38. Change Upon Change
Chapter 39. A Woman's Shortcomings
Chapter 40. The Mask
Chapter 41. A Man's Requirements
Chapter 42. A Denial
Chapter 43. A Reed
Chapter 44. Hector in the Garden
Chapter 45. Flush or Faunus
Chapter 46. Hiram Powers' Greek Slave
Chapter 47. Confessions
Chapter 48. Sonnets from the Portuguese
Chapter 49. Casa Guidi Windows: Part One (1851)
Part VI: From Poems Before Congress (1860)
Chapter 50. A Curse for a Nation
Chapter 51. A Court Lady
Chapter 52. A Tale of Villafranca
Chapter 53. The Dance
Chapter 54. Christmas Gifts
Part VII: From Last Poems
Chapter 55. Lord Walter's Wife
Chapter 56. Amy's Cruelty
Chapter 57. A False Step
Chapter 58. My Heart And I
Chapter 59. Bianca Among the Nightingales
Chapter 60. Void in Law
Chapter 61. First News from Villafranca
Chapter 62. The Forced Recruit
Chapter 63. Mother and Poet
Chapter 64. A Musical Instrument
Chapter 65. The North and the South
Index of Poems

Author Bios
Featured Contributor

Margaret Forster

Margaret Forster in the author of the biography Elizabeth Barrett Browning and of The Rash Adventurer, William Makepeace Thackeray and Significant Sisters.