SD1479. Fanny Appleton Longfellow to Emmeline Austin Wadsworth

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 267 (in part).

[Cambridge]

April 21, 1851

… I have been dipping into Mrs. Browning … lately, and am more than ever amazed at her prodigious genius, so strong and yet so purely feminine and tender, so holy with the deepest reverence. Her love sonnets in the last edition I have not seen, that is not all, but the few I have are unequalled for depth and sacredness of feeling, written with her very heart’s blood. I can hardly bear to see them in print, and yet all lovers will feel grateful for them. …

Text: Mrs. Longfellow: Selected Letters and Journals, ed. Edward Wagenknecht (New York, 1956), pp. 178–179.

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