Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Barrett-Browning volume in the 21st Century Oxford Authors series offers a comprehensive selection of the works of one of the nineteenth-century's most famous poets. The revaluation of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's work by feminist scholars has made her an established (indeed standard) author in university syllabuses in Britain and in America. Yet the emphasis upon her contribution to a female tradition has tended to rigidify Barrett Browning's contribution to English literary culture in the nineteenth century, just as her popular image as ringleted-invalid-turned-romantic-heroine served sentimentally to eclipse her role as a literary pioneer. This edition complements or corrects these emphases by being the first edition dedicated to witnessing the progress and growth of the poet's creative direction - from her juvenilia through to her major achievements and beyond. In keeping with the aims of the series, the selection honours the original sequencing of the published works as the best means of indicating the contours of Barrett Browning's poetic career. Thus, following fairly limited selections from published juvenilia, The Battle of Marathon (1820) and 'An Essay on Mind' and Other Poems (1826) and from 'Prometheus Bound' and Miscellaneous Poems (1833), there are more extensive selections from 'The Seraphim' and Other Poems (1838), from Poems 1844 and from Poems 1850 including the full text of Sonnets from the Portuguese. Substantial excerpts from Casa Guidi Windows (1851) is followed by the full text of Aurora Leigh (1857) and by selections from the posthumous Last Poems (1862). These individual sections are supplemented by careful selections (also chronologically ordered) from the correspondence, including the courtship letters with Robert Browning, and, where applicable, from poetry unpublished in the nineteenth century. The edition comes with full scholarly apparatus (introduction, chronology, explanatory notes), though it follows the series policy of recording only significant variants between editions.

Dr Josie Billington is a specialist in Victorian Literature who has published widely on nineteenth-century fiction and poetry -- Faithful Realism (2002), (ed) Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters (2006), Eliot's Middlemarch (2008), Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Shakespeare (2012), (ed) Margaret Oliphant Novellas (2013) -- and on interdisciplinary medical humanities research in the area of reading and health.
Professor Philip Davis is author of The Victorians 1830-1880 in The Oxford English Literary History series (OUP, 2002), Sudden Shakespeare (1997) Shakespeare Thinking (2007) and the biography, Bernard Malamud: A Writer's Life (OUP, 2007). He is general editor of a new series from Oxford University Press, 'The Literary Agenda', on the future of literary studies in the twenty-first century, contributing his own volume Reading and The Reader (OUP, 2013) building on The Experience of Reading (1991) and Real Voices: On Reading (1997). He is editor of The Reader magazine.

Introduction
Chronology
A Note on the Selection and Ordering
Part I: EARLY WORKS AND THE BARRETT FAMILY WRITINGS (1820-33)
From The Battle of Marathon (1820)
From (unpublished) 'Fragment of An Essay on Woman' (1822)
From An Essay on Mind (1826)
To My Father on His Birth-Day (1826)
Song ('Weep as if you thought of laughter') (1826)
Verses to my Brother (1826)
Letter to Hugh Stuart Boyd (1828)
Diary 1831-2
From Preface to translation of Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound (1833)
From translation of Prometheus Bound (1833)
A True Dream (1833)
PART II: THE SERAPHIM AND OTHER POEMS (1838), CORRESPONDENCE 1841-5
From Preface
From The Seraphim
From The Poet's Vow
From The Romaunt of Margret
The Deserted Garden
Death of Bro (1840), Letters (1841-45)
SECTION III: POEMS (1844)
Dedication: To My Father
From Preface
Past and Future
Irreparableness
Grief
Tears
Substitution
Work and Contemplation
Letter to John Kenyon
from A Drama of Exile
An Apprehension
To George Sand: A Recognition
The Soul's Expression
from The Lost Bower
The Lady's Yes
The Cry of the Children
Lady Geraldine's Courtship
SECTION IV: The Courtship Correspondence (1845-6)
From the letters of EBB and Robert Browning (January 1845- April 1846
SECTION V: POEMS 1850
Sonnets from the Portuguese
A Denial (1856)
The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point
A Reed
A Sabbath Morning at Sea
A Woman's Shortcomings
A Man's Requirements
The Mask
SECTION VI: CASA GUIDI WINDOWS (1851)
Advertisement to the First Edition
from Part I
from Part II
SECTION VII: AURORA LEIGH (1856)
Dedication
First Book
Second Book
Third Book
Fourth Book
Fifth Book
Sixth Book
Seventh Book
Eighth Book
Ninth Book
SECTION VIII: LAST POEMS (1862)
Bianca Among the Nightingales
Mother and Poet
A Musical Instrument
Lord Walter's Wife
Died
My Heart and I
The Best Thing in the World
NOTES