SOURCE: An introduction to Aurora Leigh, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, edited by Margaret Reynolds, Ohio University Press, 1992, pp. 1-77.

In the following excerpt, Reynolds discusses the politics and literary influences that shaped Browning's Aurora Leigh. She also summarizes the poem and discusses its approach to issues of femininity.

Ii

"Of course you are self-conscious—How cd. you be a poet otherwise? Tell me."

The readily retained (and easily caricatured) picture of Elizabeth Barrett Browning which is liable to overshadow interpretation of Aurora Leigh is, in part, the product of the memorable circumstances of her life, well documented through her own inveterate letter writing and well covered because of ideological assumptions about women and poetry. But it is also due, in large part, to Barrett Browning's own seriously held Romantic view of the significant worth of the individual and of the uniqueness of personal experience.

Barrett Browning is usually...