Aurora Leigh (Oxford World's Classics)

Soon as I saw the cover, I fell in love with the book. Aurora Leigh - Elizabeth's most important poem. Oxford World Classics paper back. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Kerry McSweeney Thanks, artsahobby789

I’m so glad this is still in print. I loved reading it again.

It's a sort of novel in verse, so if you don't like poetry this book might not be for you. However, this is poetry at a very high level and the story, though probably a bit slow by modern standards, has some interesting twists.

Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, wonderfully describes and illustrates what EBB calls the service that poets render. She was tempted briefly to call poets a 'priesthood'. In her age the Kantian observation that we're no longer able to believe in God, as we once did, was clearly lending itself to a base materialist extreme — identified at the time as 'modernism'. Even humanism could hardly be conceived unless godlessly. 165 years on, I think we're much more comfortable that religion plays an essential part at all levels of human love and care, notwithstanding its still strong tendency to way lay us. So I believe EBB is much more relevant to our own time than is commonly appreciated. It's no longer difficult for us to understand exactly what she's saying about the fundamentals of our relationships with each other. She needs to be read by anyone who is deeply disturbed by how things are working out in our own time. Peter White, Auckland, NZ

It's classic, but drawn out and dry. The story however is a great one of female liberation from the shackling culture of 19th century England.

Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh deserves a beautiful print edition, Oxford World's Classics has provided it. Accompanied with a great introduction by Kerry McSweeny, this edition of Barrett Browning's novel-poem is great for both studying and perusing.

I love Elizabeth Barrett Browning!

Thank you

This is the the work, along with her letters to Robert (she may be, with Cowper, the greatest English letter writer) for which EBB should be remembered. It achieves a perfect balance between her intellectual concerns and her aesthetic impulses. I have always cherished her descriptions of mellow English countryside and vibrant Italian landscape. But this isn't travelogue: we have a distinct sense of the importance of environment on character and motivation. A work to read forever.

Good straightforward Oxford Classics edition. One could always wish for footnotes of course instead of the endnotes. Poem is lively and interesting, like a swirl of theory, poem and life run together. It's original as a poem but combines so much influence it's like a major river with all the tributaries running into it.

A great book and ervice