Aurora Leigh (The World's Classics)

This verse-novel is a detailed representation of the early-Victorian age. The social panorama extends from the slums of London, through the literary world, to the upper classes and a number of satirical portraits: an aunt with rigidly conventional notions of female education; Romney Leigh, the Christian socialist; Lord Howe, the amateur radical; sir Blaise Delorme, the ostentatious Roman Catholic; and the unscrupulous society beauty, Lady Waldemar. However, the dominant presence in the work is the narrator, Aurora Leigh herself. From early years in Italy and adolescence in the West country, to the vocational choices, creative struggles, and emotional entanglements of her early adult life, Aurora Leigh develops her ideas on love, art, God, the Woman Question, and society. This edition is critically edited and fuly annotated. It should be of interest to readers of Victorian poetry and students of 19th-century English literature and women's writing.