SD2010. Thomas Woolner to Emily Tennyson

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 260 (in part).

[London]

[ca. 10] December [1856].

… I am heartily glad that you are pleased with “Aurora Leigh,” I felt sure you would. Mrs. Browning distinctly meant it for a novel written in metre. I imagine she had a great deal to say, more than she could speak in finished poetry, and as verse was to her far more natural than prose, she adopted the most fluent way of expressing herself. I think she makes a little too much of the social questions, making it too pamphletty—the same thing is illustrated in too many ways, making the book unnecessarily long. … I could go on writing a long time now in admiration, for save a few things such I have mentioned, I do thoroughly admire it—the wholesome aspiration that uplifts and illuminates the whole. I long to write and tell her how much I have enjoyed the reading of it, but I can find no time for these luxuries.

Text: Amy Woolner, Thomas Woolner, R.A., Sculptor and Poet: His Life in Letters (London, 1917), p. 124.

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