TWO-WAY MIRROR

A new account of the life and work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) aims for breadth and depth—and achieves both.

Sampson reintroduces Browning to a 21st-century audience, puts the more notorious aspects of the poet’s life in perspective, and makes the case that Browning was one of the great poets of her age. As the daughter of an eccentric English landowner, Elizabeth showed literary genius early, and her chronic illnesses freed her from the obligations of a woman of her class. Soon she was writing essays and poetry; as a young woman, she was published in England’s foremost journals thanks to her talent and support by mentors, both women and men. In her late 30s, she was contacted by poet Robert Browning, an admirer of her work. They corresponded, met, and eventually ran away to Italy to get married, a decision that enraged her controlling father, who cut her off financially (fortunately, she had her own inheritance). This well-publicized series of events, as well as Elizabeth’s eloquent love poetry, made them one of the premier couples of the 19th-century literary world, and they settled in Italy and had a son. In Italy, she wrote her nine-book masterwork, the epic poem/verse novel Aurora Leigh. Sampson provides updated research and commentary on how the Barrett family wealth was generated largely by slaves on family-owned plantations in Jamaica and how Elizabeth’s guilt at her heritage turned her toward political radicalism. The author is adept at switching between personal history and literary analysis. The latter part of the book—chronicling Elizabeth’s suffering from a series of miscarriages, pursuit of spiritualism, and increasing dependence on opium to alleviate pain—is melancholy, and Sampson chronicles the family’s wide-ranging travels in search of a climate more conducive to her health. Hers was a “life of struggle” with a bodily “machine” that often let her down, but her limitations enabled her genius. Sampson does her achievement justice.

An acute and insightful study of the life and work of a pathbreaking 19th-century poet.