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Poetry General

Aurora Leigh

by (author) Elizabeth Barrett Browning

edited by Kerry McSweeney

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Initial publish date
Nov 2008
Category
General
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780199552337
    Publish Date
    Nov 2008
    List Price
    $15.50

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Description

Aurora Leigh is the foremost example of the mid-nineteenth-century poem of contemporary life. This verse-novel is a richly detailed representation of the early Victorian age. The social panorama extends from the slums of London, through the literary world, to the upper classes and a number of superb satiric portraits: an aunt with rigidly conventional notions of female education; Romney Leigh, the Christian socialist; Lord Howe, the amateur radical; Sir Blaise Delorme, the ostentatious Roman Catholic; and the unscrupulous society beauty Lady Waldemar. However, the dominant presence in the work is the narrator, Aurora Leigh herself. From early years in Italy and adolescence in the West Country to the vocational choices, creative struggles, and emotional entanglements of her first decade of adult life, Aurora Leigh develops her ideas on art, love, God, the Woman Question, and society. This is the first critically edited and fully annotated edition for almost a century.

About the authors

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's profile page

Kerry McSweeney is Molson Professor of English, McGill University, and the author of numerous works, including The Language of the Senses: Sensory-Perceptual Dynamics in Wordsworth, Coleridge, Thoreau, Whitman, and Dickinson.

Kerry McSweeney's profile page