E561218A. Aurora Leigh (New York, 1857).
The Independent (New York), 18 December 1856, p. 8.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 323.
In the dedication of this volume of poetry to her ‘cousin and friend,’ Mrs. Browning speaks of it as “the most mature of her works, and the one into which her highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered.” The incessant crowd of editorial and other occupations has left us no room to read as yet its 370 pages; but in turning them casually back and forth, we have noted several of the rare and picture-showing felicities of phrase which are usual with the authoress, and have chanced upon some passages in which passion has fused and wielded words till the dense utterance becomes the very ‘proof and outflow of spontaneous life.’ That the subtle, apprehensive, spiritual nature, the splendid imagination and ‘sumptuous thought’ of the true poet, are also expressed in it, we can only infer from our knowledge of her previous writings. A poem of eight books in these holiday times, presumes rather largely on the leisure of editors, if not on the literary interest of the public.—We shall return to the volume again.
Reviewed:
Aurora Leigh (EBB), New York: C.S. Francis & Co., 1857.
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