Aurora Leigh

Browning (Elizabeth Barrett).    Chapman and Hall,  1857 First Edition    Nineteenth-century vellum, spine gilt with red morocco label. Advertisement leaf and half-title Small stain to upper cover, otherwise a very nice copy. With the armorial bookplate, shelf-label and marks of Nathaniel Barton Wise pp.90-91; Barnes A11; Tinker 402 Described by the author as “the most mature of my works, the one into which my highest convictions of work and art have entered”. “The poem is full of beauty from the first page to the last. The opening scenes in Italy, the impression of light, of silence, the beautiful Italian mother, the austere father with his open books, the death of the mother, who lies laid out for burial in her red silk dress, the epitaph, ‘Weep for an infant too young to weep much, when death removed this mother;’ Aurora's journey to her father’s old home, her lonely terror of England, the slow yielding of her nature to its silent beauty, her friendship with her cousin, Romany Leigh, their saddening, widening knowledge of the burden and sorrow of the life around, and the way this knowledge influences both their fates, all is described with that irresistible fervour which is the translation of the essence of things into words – of their very soul into common life.” (DNB). 

Price: £350