Lives of Victorian Literary Figures, Part II:
The Brownings, the Brontës and the Rossettis
Series Editor: Ralph Pite
Volume Editors: Simon Avery, Hester Jones and Marianna Kambani
Consulting Editor: John Mullan
Lives of Victorian Literary Figures
978 1 85196 775 9: 234x156mm: £275.00/$495.00
The second part in this series concentrates on famous literary partnerships and families. The set is a superb anthology of contemporary biographical materials which draw upon ‘official’ and unofficial biographical materials, many of which are rare or hard to locate in the original. These texts challenge established perceptions, offering an alternative view of key literary figures through the eyes of their Victorian biographers. Thus we get a glimpse of the ‘true’ public personae of the Brontës, Rossettis and Brownings before the processes of time and literary fame took over and created the reputations we know today.
The writings bring out the interdependence of the couples and families under consideration and show how the reputations of all the writers developed. In particular, they illustrate how the perception of an intimate literary partnership or literary rivalry influenced the reception of an individual writer. It is also possible to see how perceptions of gender difference in the period encouraged or prevented the freedom to write.
- Complete texts or substantial extracts reproduced
- Digitally enhanced facsimile texts
- Includes many rare items from scattered collections
- General introduction, volume introductions, headnotes, consolidated index
Contents
Volume 1: The Brownings
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ‘Glimpses into My Own Life and Literary Character; Thomas Carlyle, New Letters of Thomas Carlyle; Charles Gavin Duffy, Conversations with Carlyle; Richard Hengist Horne, A New Spirit of the Age; Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1845–1846; Mary Russell Mitford, Recollections of a Literary Life; Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ‘Flush or Faunus’; Memorials of Charles Boner; Gerardine McPherson, Memoirs of Anna Jameson; Anna Jameson, Anna Jameson: Letters and Friendships ; Edmund Gosse, Critical Kit-Kats; Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese (extracts); Mrs David Oglivy, ‘Memoir’; Robert Browning, The Death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Robert Browning, Edward Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Robert Browning, ‘O Lyric Love’; Kate Field, ‘Elizabeth Barrett Browning’, Atlantic Monthly; Nathaniel Hawthorne, Passages from the French and Italian Note-books; Edmund Clarence Stedman, Victorian Poets; Thomas Adolphus Trollope, What I Remember; John Ingram, Elizabeth Barrett Browning; William Sharp, Life of Robert Browning; Edmund Gosse, Personalia; Mrs [Alexandra] Sutherland Orr, Life and Letters of Robert Browning; Anne Ritchie, Records of Tennyson, Ruskin and Browning; Mrs Andrew [Cornelia] Crosse, The Red-Letter Days of My Life; L. B. Walford, Twelve English Authoresses; Alice Meynell, Introduction to Prometheus Bound and Other Poems; Hallam Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir By His Son; ‘Michael Field’, Works and Days; F. Merrifield, Times Literary Supplement; Robert Barrett Browning, Times Literary Supplement; Katharine de Kay Bronson, ‘Browning in Venice’, Cornhill Magazine; Henry James, William Wetmore Story and His Friends; G. K. Chesterton, Robert Browning; William Michael Rossetti, Some Reminiscences; Fannie Barrett Browning, Some Memories of Robert Browning; Dora Greenwell, ‘To Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1851’; Dora Greenwell, ‘To Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1861’; Bessie Rayner Parkes, ‘To Elizabeth Barrett Browning’; Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, ‘To Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Her Later Sonnets, 1856’; Emily Dickinson, ‘Her Last Poems’; Walter Savage Landor, ‘To Robert Browning’; Theodore Martin, ‘Robert Browning’; Algernon Swinburne, ‘A Sequence of Sonnets on the Death of Robert Browning’
Volume 2: The Brontës
Charlotte Brontë [Currer Bell], ‘Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell’; Charlotte Brontë [Currer Bell], ‘Editor’s Preface to the New Edition of Wuthering Heights’; Charlotte Brontë [Currer Bell], Preparatory Note to ‘Selections [of Poems by Ellis Bell]’; Elizabeth Gaskell, The Brontës: Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondence; Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë; A. H., Letter of August 1855; Ellen Nussey, ‘Reminiscences of Charlotte Brontë’, Scribner’s Monthly; Ellen Nussey, [Reminiscences of the last days of Anne Brontë], The Life of Charlotte Brontë; Mary Taylor, Letters to Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë; George A. Wade, ‘Charlotte Brontë as I Knew Her’, Great Thoughts; William Scruton, ‘Martha Brown’, Thornton and the Brontës; William Scruton, Pen and Pencil Pictures of Old Bradford; C. Holmes Cautley, ‘Old Haworth Folk Who Knew the Brontës’, Cornhill Magazine; [Benjamin Binns], ‘The Brontes and Bronte Country’, Bradford Observer; Anon., ‘A “Stroller’s” Interview with Charlotte Brontë’, Thornton and the Brontës; [John Stores Smith], ‘Personal Reminiscences: A Day with Charlotte Brontë’, Free Lance: A Journal of Humour and Criticism; Robert Southey, The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles; Mrs Oliphant, Annals of a Publishing House: William Blackwood and His Sons, Their Magazine and Friends; Arthur Christopher Benson, The Life of Edward White Benson; Mrs Strickland, [Charlotte and the White Family of Rawdon], Westminster Gazette; Letter from Constantine Heger to the Revd Patrick Brontë, (November 1842); Theo[dore F.] Wolfe, ‘Scenes of Charlotte Bronté’s Life in Brussels’, Lippincott’s Magazine; Letter from Mlle de Bassompierre in Thornton and the Brontës; Joseph J. Green, ‘Miss Wheelwright’, Hastings and St Leonards Observer; William Dearden [Oakendale], ‘Who Wrote “Wuthering Heights”?’, Halifax Guardian; Francis H. Grundy, Pictures of the Past: Memories of Men I have Met and Places I Have Seen; Francis A. Leyland, The Brontë Family, with Special Reference to Patrick Branwell Brontë; George Smith, ‘Charlotte Brontë’, Cornhill Magazine; R[ichard] H[enry] Horne, ‘Charlotte Brontë’, in Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Benjamin Lewes Saul [Lewis Melville], William Makepeace Thackeray: A Biography; William Makepeace Thackeray, ‘The Last Sketch’, Cornhill Magazine; Anna Isabella Ritchie, ‘My Witches’ Cauldron’, Chapters from Some Memoirs; Letter from Anne Thackeray Ritchie to Reginald J. Smith; Letters of Anne Thackeray Ritchie; Mrs Brookfield, Mrs Brookfield and Her Circle; Letter from Jane Welsh Carlyle to Helen Walsh, Jane Welsh Carlyle: Letters to her Family; Emily and Catherine Winkworth, Memorial of Two Sisters; Harriet Martineau, Autobiography, with Memorials by Marian Weston Chapman; Harriet Martineau, ‘Death of Currer Bell’, Biographical Sketches, 1852–1875; Matthew Arnold, Letter to Miss Wightman; Matthew Arnold, ‘Haworth Churchyard’, Fraser’s Magazine; W. H. Cooke, ‘A Winter’s Day at Haworth’, St James’s Magazine; Anon., ‘An Australian Squatter’s Recollections of the Brontës’, Leeds Mercury; [Abraham Holroyd], ‘Reminiscences of the Brontës’, Thornton and the Brontës; Sir Humphry Davy Rolleston, The Right Honorable Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt K.C.B.: A Memoir; William Cory, Extracts from the Letters and Journals of William Cory
Volume 3: The Rossettis
‘Campaigner At Home’ [Anon.], ‘Our Camp in the Woodland:A Day with the Gentle Poets’, Fraser’s Magazine; Anon., ‘Christina G. Rossetti’, Catholic World; T. Hall Caine, Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Joseph Knight, Life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti; William Minto, Autobiographical Notes on the Life of William Bell Scott; Thomas Gordon Hake, Memoirs of Eighty Years; Edmund Gosse, ‘Christina Rossetti’, Century; F. G. Stephens, Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Alice Meynell, ‘Christina Rossetti’, New Review; Ellen A. Proctor, A Brief Memoir of Christina G. Rossetti; William Michael Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti: His Family-Letters, with a Memoir; Anon., ‘The Rossettis’, London Quarterly Review; Mackenzie Bell, Christina Rossetti: A Biographical and Critical Study; Herbert H. Gilchrist, ‘Recollections of Rossetti’, Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine; Henry Treffry Dunn, Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and His Circle; William Michael Rossetti, The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti, with Memoir and Notes; Arthur C. Benson, Rossetti; William Michael Rossetti, Some Reminiscences; W. Theodore Watts-Dunton, Old Familiar Faces; Arthur Symons, Studies in Strange Souls; Virginia Woolf, ‘I am Christina Rossetti’, The Common Reader; Frances Winwar, The Rossettis and Their Circle
Reviews
'instructive and engaging.'
– The Dickensian