Reviews

E510500A.  The Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (New York, 1850).

Southern Literary Messenger, May 1851, p. 328.

As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 301.

We have never particularly admired Mrs. Browning’s poetry, and for a reason that we have some hesitation in expressing—we have always thought it affected. Affectation is a charge easily made, and not unfrequently with injustice, and it applies after all more to the manner in which the thought is expressed, than to the sincerity of purpose of the writer; so that when we make the charge, we do not do so idly. But we have so frequently been bewildered by the obscurity of Mrs. Browning’s style, and perplexed with the difficulty which she seems to endeavor to throw around the simplest matter, that we have been tempted more than once to give her up altogether. We know that there are very many people who are fond of Mrs. Browning, to whom this new and beautiful edition of her poems will be most acceptable, and we shall certainly not quarrel with them for enjoying what we confess we may not properly appreciate—a strain to which our own spirit is not attuned.

Reviewed:

Poems (EBB), New York: C.S. Francis, 1850.

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