Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Abstract

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• Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Beverly Taylor (bio)

Once again, the most important contribution this year to EBB studies is a new volume of The Brownings’ Correspondence (Wedgestone Press, 2023). With volume 29 of the series, gathering the Brownings’ correspondence for February 1861 through November 1861, general editor Philip Kelley and his collaborator Edward Hagan bring the collection of meticulously edited letters by both Brownings and some of their correspondents up to the date when EBB died (Robert describes her final night, June 29, 1861, to his father and sister Sarianna; pp. 164–168). Though she died just a little more than halfway through the volume’s letters, EBB remains its focal point throughout, for the volume includes multiple contemporary reviews: A Drama of Exile; Poems (1850); Casa Guidi Windows; Poems (1856); Aurora Leigh; Poems before Congress; and retrospective general review essays. It also includes a generous sampling of obituary notices, brief, full, and fulsome (pp. 371–399), as well as a reminiscence by Mary Ayrault Craig, who knew the Brownings in Florence and recalls their relationship in the early days as “an experiment in marriage, triumphant and conclusive” (p. 404). Appendix I provides biographical sketches of Kate Field and of Thomas Adolphus Trollope and his wife, the poet Theodosia Garrow Trollope, whom EBB knew from her time in Torquay, where she indicated a lack of enthusiasm for Garrow Trollope’s poetry. The second appendix, which quotes supporting documents, includes a wide range of recollections of EBB from letters and diaries, most of them recording some version of the sentiment that EBB was “as perfect as God permits in the flesh” and her death is a great “loss to the world!” (pp. 287, 306). The volume annotates the letters with splendidly precise and illuminating notes. Like the previous volumes in the series, volume 29 of The Brownings’ Correspondence represents a model of what a scholarly edition should be. [End Page 345]

The volume’s earliest letters record EBB’s total immersion in Italian politics. With her friend Isa Blagden she discusses the role of France in Italy’s future and the character of the French emperor, Napoleon III. Along the way she explains to Sarianna the importance of sculpting to Robert, who can write poetry only when inspired to do so (p. 37), and she corrects Fanny Haworth’s understanding of Swedenborgianism in relation to spiritualism (p. 42). Letters from and about Walter Savage Landor remind us how difficult it must have been for Robert to serve as his guardian, and of Robert’s generosity in taking on the charge. In multiple letters EBB reaffirms her intention to spend three months in France with Robert’s family, mindful that her physical infirmities prevented their plans to get together in the previous summer, although she acknowledges that sometimes going to Paris for the summer seems more taxing than going to Heaven (p. 100). Just eighteen days before she dies, she is vigorously protesting Robert’s decision that she is too weak to make the trip (p. 147).

EBB writes Isa about the contretemps of William Makepeace Thackeray’s refusing to publish “Lord Walter’s Wife” in The Cornhill Magazine (pp. 86ff); sends him another poem for this journal he edits, “Little Mattie”; and remarks the gendered aspects of their controversy (pp. 93–94; see also p. 99). She indicates that she anticipated Italian poet Francesco Dall’Ongaro was going to translate her Poems before Congress into Italian (pp. 97–100), while also hinting at the delicate challenge of treating with an established and popular poet to perform such a menial service. (Although Dall’Ongaro translated “A Court Lady,” there is no evidence that he translated other poems from the volume.)

After EBB died, Robert’s letters perform a limited range of functions. He informs close friends of the details of EBB’s death. He resumes friendships by letter. He refers to friends’ efforts to secure London housing for him. He announces that he will devote the rest of his life to educating his son Pen to enter an English university, seeking opinions on whether tutoring will be better for Pen than attending a boarding school such as Harrow or Eton. More than once...