Subjects
The Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
General Editor: Sandra Donaldson
Editorial Team: Rita Patteson, Marjorie Stone and Beverly Taylor
Associate Editors: Simon Avery, Cynthia Burgess, Clara Drummond and Barbara Neri
Editorial Associate: Jane Stewart Laux
The Pickering Masters
978 1 85196 900 5: 234x156mm: £450.00/$795.00
This is the first modern scholarly edition of the works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861). A canonical Victorian writer and thinker, Barrett Browning personified the engaged intellectual. She participated in the debates on Italian unification, women’s rights, the anti-slavery movement, factory reform, religion, aesthetics and poetics. This edition provides a foundation for a complete analysis and interpretation of her works - and of Victorian Britain.
The edition presents accurate and accessible texts of all her published literary works. Copytexts are carefully chosen to represent poems in their final version, as overseen by Barrett Browning herself. It also includes all her known unpublished works. New transcripts are drawn from manuscript sources in private and public archives in the UK and the US. Several works have recently been reattributed: a poem long thought to be by Robert Browning and a sermon in the style of Bishop Andrewes which Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote when she was seventeen. This edition offers the first clear copies of these works.
New editorial material includes a general introduction, a critical and a textual introduction to each volume, headnotes to poems, footnotes recording textual variants, endnotes, short-title indexes and first-line indexes to each volume, and a consolidated index. The Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning will be essential for scholars of nineteenth century literature, women’s writing and Victorian Studies.
- The first extensive scholarly edition of this canonical writer
- All works are newly transcribed from carefully chosen copytexts or manuscript material
- Many works which are unpublished or have not been republished are included here for the first time, as well as works which have recently been rediscovered and reattributed
- Editorial apparatus includes a general introduction, volume introductions, headnotes, textual variants, endnotes, short-title and first-line indexes, and a consolidated index
Contents
Volumes I & II
Poems 4th edition (1856)
A Drama of Exile; The Seraphim; Prometheus Bound; A Lament for Adonis; A Vision of Poets; The Poet’s Vow; The Romaunt of Margret; Isobel’s Child; The Romaunt of the Page; The Lay of the Brown Rosary; A Romance of the Ganges; Rhyme of the Duchess May; The Romance of the Swan’s Nest; Bertha in the Lane; Lady Geraldine’s Courtship; The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point; The Cry of the Children; A Child Asleep; The Fourfold Aspect; Night and the Merry Man; Earth and Her Praisers; The Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus; An Island; The Soul’s Travelling; To Bettine, The Child-Friend of Goethe; Man and Nature; A Sea-Side Walk; The Sea-Mew; Felicia Hemans; L E L ’s Last Question; Crowned and Wedded; Crowned and Buried; To Flush, My Dog; The Deserted Garden; My Doves; Hector in the Garden; Sleeping and Watching; Sounds; The Soul’s Expression; The Seraph and Poet; Bereavement; Consolation; To Mary Russell Mitford in Her Garden; On a Portrait of Wordsworth by B. R. Haydon; Past and Future; Irreparableness; Tears; Grief; Substitution; Comfort; Perplexed Music; Work; Futurity; The Two Sayings; The Look; The Meaning of the Look; A Thought for a Lonely Death-bed; Work and Contemplation; Pain in Pleasure; Flush or Faunus; Finite and Infinite; An Apprehension; Discontent; Patience Taught by Nature; Cheerfulness Taught by Reason; Exaggeration; Adequacy; To George Sand. A Desire; To George Sand. A Recognition; The Prisoner; Insufficiency; Two Sketches H B I; A B II; Mountaineer and Poet; The Poet; Hiram Powers’ Greek Slave; Life; Love; Heaven and Earth; The Prospect; Hugh Stuart Boyd. His Blindness; Hugh Stuart Boyd. His Death, 1848; Hugh Stuart Boyd. Legacies; The Lost Bower; A Song Against Singing; Wine of Cyprus; A Rhapsody of Life’s Progress; A Lay of the Early Rose; The Poet and The Bird. A Fable; The Cry of the Human; A Portrait; Confessions; Loved Once; The House of Clouds; A Sabbath Morning at Sea; A Flower in a Letter; The Mask; Calls on the Heart; Wisdom Unapplied; Memory and Hope; Human Life’s Mystery; Child’s Thought of God; The Claim; Song of the Rose; A Dead Rose; The Exile’s Return; The Sleep; The Measure; Cowper’s Grave; The Weakest Thing; The Pet-Name; The Mourning Mother; A Valediction; Lessons from the Gorse; The Lady’s Yes; A Woman’s Shortcomings; A Man’s Requirements; A Year’s Spinning; Change Upon Change; That Day; A Reed; The Dead Pan; A Child’s Grave at Florence; Catarina To Camoens; Life and Love; A Denial; Proof and Disproof; Question and Answer; Inclusions; Insufficiency; Sonnets from the Portuguese; Casa Guidi Windows
Volume III
Aurora Leigh (1859)
Volumes IV & V
Poems Before Congress (1860)
Napoleon III. In Italy; The Dance; A Tale of Villafranca; A Court Lady; An August Voice; Christmas Gifts; Italy and the World; A Curse for a Nation
Last Poems (1862)
Little Mattie; A False Step; Void in Law; Lord Walter’s Wife; Bianca Among the Nightingales; My Kate; A Song for the Ragged Schools of London; May’s Love; Amy’s Cruelty; My Heart and I; The Best Thing in the World; Where’s Agnes?; De Profundis; A Musical Instrument; First News from Villafranca; King Victor Emanuel Entering Florence; The Sword of Castruccio Castracani; Summing Up in Italy; ‘Died . . .’; The Forced Recruit; Garibaldi; Only a Curl; A View Across the Roman Campagna; The King’s Gift; Parting Lovers; Mother and Poet; Nature’s Remorses; The North and The South
The Battle of Marathon (1820)
An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems (1826)
An Essay on Mind; To My Father on His Birth-Day; Spenserian Stanzas on a Boy of Three Years Old; Verses to My Brother; Stanzas on the Death of Lord Byron; Memory; To ___; Stanzas Occasioned by a passage in Mr. Emerson’s Journal; The Past; The Prayer; On a Picture of Riego’s Widow; Song; The Dream; Riga’s Last Song; The Vision of Fame
Prometheus Bound and Miscellaneous Poems (1833)
Prometheus Bound; The Tempest; A Sea-side Meditation; A Vision of Life and Death; Earth; The Picture Gallery at Penshurst; To a Poet’s Child; Minstrelsy; To the Memory of Sir Uvedale Price, Bart.; The Autumn; The Death-Bed of Teresa del Riego; To Victoire, on Her Marriage; To a Boy; Remonstrance; Epitaph; The Image of God; The Appeal; Idols; Hymn; Weariness
The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838)
The Little Friend; The Student; Stanzas; The Young Queen; Victoria’s Tears; Vanities; A Supplication for Love, Hymn I; The Mediator, Hymn II; The Weeping Saviour, Hymn III
The Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets (1842/1863)
Psyche Apocalypte, ed. S R Townshend Mayer (1841/1876)
New Poems, ed. Frederic G. Kenyon (1914)
Aeschylus’s Soliloquy [here attributed to Robert Browning]; The Enchantress; Leila, A Tale; A True Dream; Epistle to a Canary; Elizabeth Barrett Barrett’s Criticisms of Some of her Future Husband’s poems
Hitherto Unpublished Poems and Stories with an Inedited Autobiography (1914)
To Baby; Excerpts from ‘Elsbeth was a castle builder by profession’; On the Cruelty of Forcement to Man; Alluding to the Press Gang; On Early Rising; ‘Ye lovely lillies of the Vale’; ‘Near to a shady wood where Fir trees grew’; ‘Ah! Virtue, come my steps to stay’; ‘Loft on the top of that high hill a lonely cottage stood’; ‘Upon the boundaries of a lofty Wood’; ‘Oh! thou! whom Fortune led to stray’; ‘Soft as the dew from Heaven descends’; ‘Soft were the murmurs of the gentle rill’; ‘As I was walking by a hedge’ / ‘Its golden plumage glittered’’; To my Dearest Papa; On the Return of the Fine Season; Occasioned by a Fall of Snow; In Imitation of ‘Pity the Sorrows of a Poor Old Man’; Sent to Mama on 1st May 1814; The Hermit; To Flora; On an Eruption of Mount Etna; To the Fishing Net.—Written the morning the pond was drawn at Hope End; ‘Mine’s the sweet home in yonder cell’; An Epistle to Henrietta; ‘Wild were the windings of the stream’; Addressed to dearest Papa on his birthday, upon the recovery of little Arabella from a dangerous illness; Upon the Rose Blowing after the Lilly; ‘Oh! Virtue’s gone, sweet Virtue flies’; On Visiting Matlock, Derbyshire; To her Uncle Sam, with her Poetry; A Song; On First Seeing the Sea at Tynemouth; The Beggar Boy’s Petition to Little Sam; ‘Fair Emma pluckt the sweet carnation’; On a Ship Being Lost at Tynemouth; ‘Ah! now, stern winter’s chilling blast returns’; An Epistle to Dearest Papa in London; ‘Down in a Vale, a little cottage stood’; ‘Fair and crystal is the Spring’; Prologue (‘Well my good friends’); On Hearing Catalani Sing, and Being Told her Story; After a Shower of Rain; First French Lines; Sebastian, or the Lost Child—A Tale of Other Times; Disobedience; The Way to Humble Pride; ‘Oh! Virtue sweet, Oh! beauteous Truth’; ‘Far along a rugged wood’; ‘By a large and spacious plain’; Hannibal’s Passage of the Alps; ‘By the side of a hill hollow’; ‘As I wandered along thro’ a Wood’; ‘Down in a Vale a cottage rose’; ‘In a Vale a lilly droops’; The Seasons; To Little Sam on His Birthday; Aurora; On Mr. Bell’s Sickness at Hope End; To Mama – Hope End; ‘A King is a Man, the same as the Beggar’; Of Prophecy; An Address to Truth; ‘Amid the secret windings of a grove’; On the First of May – Mama’s Birthday; On the Clock Put up at Hope End; On Papa’s Birthday; On Morning; 375. ‘Where can happiness be found’; To Summer; To the Muse; On Poverty; To Flora (‘Sweet Virgin Hail’); ‘See that rock which o’erlooks the turbulent deep’; To Evening; On a Rose Pulled on a Dewy Morning; To Dearest Henrietta on Her Birthday; ‘Come forth thou blessed strain of poetry’; ‘Look up that mountain’s craggy steep’; To My Dearest Papa On His Birthday; ‘Accept my gift! for love’s sweet couch is flowers’; ‘May flowery gales, which waft this pledge of love’; The Cathedral; To Mama & Papa; ‘Soyez satisfaite, O generation d’Adam!’; To my Dearest Brother Edward (on his Birthday); Morning – November, 1816; Regulus; After the Farce of Hamlet, the Epilogue by Elizabeth; To dearest Storm, on His Birthday; ‘Sweet is the perfume of apples and shaddocks’; Mary Maddox; Bro; Ba; Addles; Papa; Mary Barrett; Minny; Bro’s Lament over a Pocket Handkerchief; Translation From Dante, Inferno, Lines 1 to 27;; Impromptu on a Candlestick; ‘Celestial Hope thy healing dews’; A Vision (Extempore); ‘ . . . [Hea]venly bodies under the fostering sway’; ‘My Child!! my hope and art thou dead’; To my dearest Sam On his birthday; Written in the Anguish of Bidding Farewell to my Beloved Bro; ‘Though I am unable to swell into the sublime . . .’; Princess Caroline of Brunswick and Her Daughter;
Hitherto Unpublished Poems and Stories with an Inedited Autobiography (1914) (cont.)
Appendix: Notes on a Trip to Paris October and November, 1815; Sketch of my own life and reflections; Translation from Plato, Dialogue between Criton and Socrates; Translation of Anacreontic verse: ‘‘Anacreon,’ the ladies say’; Translation from Bion: Cleodamus and Myrson; Translation of the Ninth Satire of Horace’s First Book; Translation from Claudian; Dedication and excerpts from preface to a proposed collection of poems (To Thomas Campbell ‘as a humble tribute’ ‘In opening this little volume, which so humbly’); Thoughts Awakened by Contemplating a Piece of the Palm which Grows on the Summit of the Athenian Acropolis [Cf. New Monthly Maga (1821)]; ‘I sent a message to the Muse’; Prologue (‘So you come to our play’); To My Dearest Papa on His Birthday 1825; The Rose and the Zephyr; Irregular Stanzas; Meditations; Remarks by Elizabeth Barrett on proof sheets of a work by Uvedale Price; ‘Who art thou of the veilëd countenance’ [Cf. Jewish Expositor (1827)]; Conversation (excerpts from autobiographical piece on ‘the development of genius’); To Uvedale Price Esqr On his birthday; To My Beloved Mama; Stanzas Addressed to Hugh Stuart Boyd with a translation of the ‘Prometheus Bound’ of Aeschylus; To Mary Hunter on her Birthday; A Thought on Thoughts, Athenaeum (1836); The Pestilence, The Times (1832); To E.W.C. Painting my Picture; A Sunset; The Statesman’s Funeral; ‘Fieschi’s fate to Frenchmen seems the goal of bliss to touch!’; ‘The moon looks downward on the earth’; ‘The moon and earth are face to face’; ‘Night-making One’; ‘Oh calm it, God!’; ‘Come thou! thou never knewest’;’That a word of wrong take the cradle song’; ‘Your lyrics found me dull as prose’; ‘Have any dreamt that when the cross / In mystic darkness rested’; ‘You might be elated’; Hymn I; Hymn II; Hymn III; The Maiden’s Death: A New Version, The Pioneer (1843); To G. B. H. November 2, 1844; The First Canto of Dante’s Inferno; ‘Ye muses warbling in melodious spells’; The Poet’s Record; Kings; The Queen in Scotland; ‘Fair Poesy’; Of his lyre; that it will play only of love: ‘Fain would I sing’; To his comrades, to justify himself in drinking: ‘The earth drinks herself dark’; Bathyllus’ beauty: ‘In this shadow of Bathyllus’; To himself, to drown his cares: ‘When I drink the red red wine’; Wine the poor man’s wealth: ‘Where Bacchus enters bright’; Cupid beauty’s slave: ‘O love, The Muses bound him’; To a lady, with an old man’s love-gift: ‘Sweetest do not fly me’; To the grasshopper: ‘Blessing on thee Grasshopper’; Age and mirth: ‘I love to see a glad old man’; ‘She was fifteen – had great eyes’
Verse translations
Paraphrase on Theocritus: The Cyclops; Paraphrases on Apuleius: Psyche Gazing on Cupid; Psyche Wafted by Zephyrus; Psyche and Pan; Psyche Propitiating Ceres; Psyche and the Eagle; Psyche and Cerberus; Psyche and Proserpine; Psyche and Venus; Mercury Carries Psyche to Olympus; Marriage of Psyche and Cupid; Paraphrases on Nonnus: How Bacchus Finds Ariadne Sleeping; How Bacchus Comforts Ariadne; Paraphrase on Hesiod: Bacchus and Ariadne; Paraphrase on Euripides: Aurora and Tithonus; Paraphrases on Homer: Hector and Andromache; The Daughters of Pandarus; Another Version; Paraphrase on Anacreon: Ode to the Swallow; Paraphrases on Heine
Uncollected, Reattributed and Newly Discovered Works
The Sorrows of the Muses (1817); First Greek Ode May 4th.1819. To Summer; Stanzas Excited by Some Reflections on the Present State of Greece, New Monthly Magazine (1821); Fragment of an ‘Essay on Woman’ (c. 1822); A Night Watch by the Sea, Monthly Chronicle (1840); Queen Annelida and False Arcite (1841); The Complaint of Annelida to False Arcite (1841); Review of Wordsworth’s Poems Chiefly of early and late years, Athenaeum (1842); The Duchess of Orleans; Introductory Stanzas; Adelaide Kemble; Herr Dobler; Samuel Rogers; The King of Prussia; The Prince of Wales Reverend R H Horne’s ‘Orion,’ Athenaeum (1843); Adam’s Farewell to Eden in his Age; ‘What is under the rose’ (1844); ‘American Poetry’ (review) Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine (1845); A ring, The Times Literary Supplement (1846); Petrarch Rime LXI: ‘Now blessed be the day & month & year’ (n.d.); ‘Like this book, the heart affords’ (n.d.)’ ‘The Ephemeral’ (n.d.); Translation of Anacreontea, Ode LIX: ‘Grapes that wear a purple skin’; Trans. from Hesiod’s Works and Days: ‘And when that Sirius and Orion come’; Trans. from Hesiod’s The Shield of Heracles: ‘Some gathered grapes with reap-hooks in their hands’; Stabat Mater; Ballad; Before Sleeping