This new anthology emphasizes Victorian nonfiction prose and verse with a generous, fresh selection of pieces from authors within the canon as well as outside of it.

Victorian Literature: 1830-1900

Literature & Fiction

TUCKER

Mermin, Dorothy

Literary

Cengage Learning'

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61) was the first major woman poet in the English literary tradition. Her significance has been obscured in this century by her erasure from most literary histories and her exclusion from academic anthologies. Dorothy Mermin's critical and biographical study argues for Barrett Browning's originative role in both the Victorian poetic tradition and the development of women's literature. Barrett Browning's place at the wellhead of a new female tradition remains the single most important fact about her in terms of literary history, and it was central to her self-consciousness as a poet. Mermin's study shows that Barrett Browning's anomalous situation was constantly present to her imagination and that questions of gender shaped almost everything she wrote. Mermin argues that Barrett Browning's poetry covertly inspects and dismantles the barriers set in her path by gender and that in her major works—Sonnets from the Portuguese, Aurora Leigh, her best political poems, "A Musical Instrument"—difficulty is turned into triumph, incorporating the author's femininity, her situation as a woman poet, and her increasingly substantial fame. Mermin skillfully interweaves biography and close readings of the poems to show precisely how Barrett Browning's life as a woman writer is a part of the essential meaning of her art. Both her personal and her literary achievements are exceptionally well documented, especially for her formative years. Mermin makes extensive use of the poet's early essays, a diary covering most of her twenty-sixth year, and the enormous number of letters that have survived. Ranging from her earliest ambitions through her long periods of discouragement and illness to her happy married life with Robert Browning, this comprehensive study of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is essential reading for students of the Victorian period, English literature, and women's studies.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: The Origins of a New Poetry (Women in Culture and Society)

British & Irish

University of Chicago Press

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61) was the first major woman poet in the English literary tradition. Her significance has been obscured in this century by her erasure from most literary histories and her exclusion from academic anthologies. Dorothy Mermin's critical and biographical study argues for Barrett Browning's originative role in both the Victorian poetic tradition and the development of women's literature. Barrett Browning's place at the wellhead of a new female tradition remains the single most important fact about her in terms of literary history, and it was central to her self-consciousness as a poet. Mermin's study shows that Barrett Browning's anomalous situation was constantly present to her imagination and that questions of gender shaped almost everything she wrote. Mermin argues that Barrett Browning's poetry covertly inspects and dismantles the barriers set in her path by gender and that in her major works—Sonnets from the Portuguese, Aurora Leigh, her best political poems, "A Musical Instrument"—difficulty is turned into triumph, incorporating the author's femininity, her situation as a woman poet, and her increasingly substantial fame. Mermin skillfully interweaves biography and close readings of the poems to show precisely how Barrett Browning's life as a woman writer is a part of the essential meaning of her art. Both her personal and her literary achievements are exceptionally well documented, especially for her formative years. Mermin makes extensive use of the poet's early essays, a diary covering most of her twenty-sixth year, and the enormous number of letters that have survived. Ranging from her earliest ambitions through her long periods of discouragement and illness to her happy married life with Robert Browning, this comprehensive study of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is essential reading for students of the Victorian period, English literature, and women's studies.

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

"Students and teachers of Victorian women’s careers will be grateful for [Mermin’s] intelligent and equable guidance as they negotiate the paradoxes of ÂGodiva’s Ride." —Modern Philology
"This brief study should be enormously helpful to students seeking an introduction to feminist approaches to Victorian writers." —Choice
"Mermin’s fine book is a work of synthesis that moves across many genres of women’s writing... and touches on neglected writers of the period... as well as on the canonized few." —American Historical Review
"ÂGodiva’s Ride is a stimulating and enjoyable study of an exceptionally rich subject... " —Victorian Periodicals Review
"Accessible, original, and gracefully written, ÂGodiva’s Ride is likely to be as engrossing for the general reader as for the expert." —Victorian Studies
Describes the first great age of women’s writing in England. Mermin discusses how women were encouraged to become writers, how they were discouraged and hindered, and what they wrote. The many women entering the mainstream of English literature in this era included the Brontës, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Margaret Oliphant, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Harriet Martineau.

Godiva's Ride: Women of Letters in England, 1830–1880

History & Criticism

Indiana University Press

Godiva's Ride: Women of Letters in England, 1830-1880

Indiana Univ. Pr

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