SOURCE: Review of Aurora Leigh, in The Athenaeum, No. 1517, November 22, 1856, pp. 1425-7.

In this review, Chorley praises Browning's style and intent but claims that the plot of Aurora Leigh is "in its argument unnatural, and in its form infelicitous."

Our best living English poetess—our greatest English poetess of any time—has essayed in Aurora Leigh to blend the epic with the didactic novel. The medium in which the story floats is that impassioned language—spotted and flowered with the imagery suggested by fancy or stored up by learning,—which has given the verse of Mrs. Browning a more fiery acceptance from the young and spiritual, and her name a higher renown than any woman has heretofore gained.

We dwell on the sex of the author of Aurora Leigh in no disrespectful spirit of comparison, but simply because to overlook it is rendered impossible by the poetess herself...