SD1989. Anna Brownell Jameson to Ottilie von Goethe

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 256 (in part).

[Ealing]

Nov. 23, [1856].

My dearest Ottilie,

I have received the two little parcels from you by Miss Montgomery and Louise Noel … I have a copy of Mrs. Browning’s new poem for you, ‘Aurora Leigh’. It is most beautiful, amazing for the wealth of poetry and power, from beginning. I am still in a state of wonder and admiration. I shall send it to you as soon as I can. It is criticised because of the ideas it contains on what is called here the ‘Woman Question’. How that question may stand in Germany I do not know. But as to the general power and beauty there is only one opinion. One writer, otherwise most severe, calls it the greatest poem ever written by a woman. …

Publication: Letters of Anna Jameson to Ottilie von Goethe, ed. G.H. Needler (London, 1939), pp. 212–213.

Manuscript: Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv.

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