Aurora Leigh: A Norton Critical Edition

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.

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.