Aurora Leigh: A Norton Critical Edition (Norton Critical Editions) - Softcover

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393962989 ISBN 13: 9780393962987

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995

Synopsis

This Norton Critical Edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s 1856 verse-novel is based on Margaret Reynolds’ variorum edition, which the British Academy awarded the 1993 Rose Mary Crawshay Prize and which is reprinted here by special arrangement with the Ohio University Press.

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.

About this title

About the Author

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime.

Margaret Reynolds is Lecturer in English at the University of Birmingham.  She is the editor of the variorum Aurora Leigh (Ohio University Press, 1992), Erotica (Pandora and Ballantine, 1990), and The Penguin Book of Lesbian Short Stories (1994). She is co-editor (with Angela Leighton) of Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology (Basil Blackwell, 1995). She is currently at work on Sappho’s Companions.

Review

Novel in blank verse by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, published in 1857. The first-person narrative, which comprises some 11,000 lines, tells of the heroine's childhood and youth in Italy and England, her self-education in her father's hidden library, and her successful pursuit of a literary career. Initially resisting a marriage proposal by the philanthropist Romney Leigh, Aurora later surrenders her independence and weds her faithful suitor, whose own idealism has also since been tempered by experience. Aurora's career, Romney's social theories, and a melodramatic subplot concerning forced prostitution elicit the author's vivid observations on the importance of poetry, the individual's responsibility to society, and the victimization of women. Although it was a great popular success, Aurora Leigh was not admired by critics. -- The Merriam-Webster Encylopedia of Literature

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0393962989
• ISBN 13: 9780393962987
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 584
• Editor: Reynolds Margaret