"Different Planes of Sensuous Form": American Critical and Popular Responses to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh and Last Poems: Annotated Bibliography, American Periodicals, 1856-62

Introduction

In her dedication of Aurora Leigh to John Kenyon, Elizabeth Barrett Browning described her book as "the most mature of my works, and the one into which my highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered."² Throughout her lifetime, from the publication of her first book in 1826, An Essay on Mind, through the publication of Poems Before Congress, the final volume of which was released before her death in 1861, she maintained her high poetic aspirations, often challenging poetic conventions with her diction, choice of subject matter, unconventional philosophies about women and their roles as poets and artists, and her stance on social, economic, and political issues of the day. The year 2006 marks the bicentennial of Browning's birth, and it seems an opportune time to examine and to amplify, in some modest way, the bibliographical research done on Browning and her poetry. The purpose of this introductory essay and annotated bibliography is to examine previously undocumented reviews and essays of Aurora Leigh and Last Poems which appear in American periodicals during the years 1856-62. A second purpose is to record, through an explanation of the resources and methods utilized, how access to a new electronic database, the American Periodicals Series (APS) available from ProQuest, may augment the scholarship and bibliographic study of numerous nineteenth-century authors including Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Charles Dickens.

Aurora Leigh, Browning's novel-length poem written in nine books, was first published in England and America in late 1856, although both the British and American editions carried an imprint of 1857. The American edition, published by C.S. Francis of New York, was never revised, while the British edition, published by Chapman and Hall, appeared in three subsequent impressions which were revised by the author, the last of which appeared in 1859.³

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's popularity in America was widespread, in part, because she often contributed poems to American journals such as Graham's Magazine and The Literary World. In 1845 Langley of New York produced an American edition of her two-volume work, A Drama of Exile: and Other Poems. All of Browning's book length works after 1845 appeared in both American and English imprints. Last Poems was published by James Miller of New York in 1862, the year following Browning's death.⁴

Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her work provide boundless, complex, and challenging opportunities for literary scholars. Her work has received increased interest from researchers, especially since the early 1970s, the decade of a renaissance in feminist literary theory and of theoretical and critical advances made by scholars such as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar.⁵ Another notable scholar, Sandra Donaldson, currently Chez Fritzer Distinguished Professor of English at the University of North Dakota, has spent more than 30 years studying and writing about Browning. In 1993 Donaldson published Elizabeth Barrett Browning: An Annotated Bibliography of the Commentary and Criticism, 1826-1990, the definitive bibliography about Browning published to date. Donaldson is also co-editor for The Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A Complete Edition, a five-volume set scheduled for publication in 2007 by Pickering and Chatto. The last editions of Browning's complete poems appeared in 1900 and were published by Thomas Crowell of New York and Houghton Mifflin of Boston, respectively.⁶

Several important doctoral studies also contribute significant bibliographical information to the scholarship. In her dissertation entitled Elizabeth Barrett Browning: The Poet as Heroine of Literary History, Tricia Lootens discusses the "secular sainthood" of Browning and the varying, often contradictory critical and popular responses such "sainthood" engendered.⁷ Borrowing the phrase "secular sainthood" from folklorists, Lootens claims that critics sanctified Browning as a woman-a heroine-while offering various critical responses to her works. After Browning's death, Aurora Leigh was singled out for particular castigation, while earlier works such as Sonnets from the Portuguese and A Drama of Exile rose in critical stature. For these reasons, Lootens postulates...