SOURCE: "The Angel: The Seraphim, and Other Poems (1838)," in Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Woman and Artist, University of North Carolina Press, 1988, pp. 12-45.

In the following chapter from her Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Woman and Artist, Cooper surveys Browning 's early literary influences and how she transformed them to establish an original voice in The Seraphim, and Other Poems.

Heaven is dull,
 Mine Ador, to Man's earth.
 —"The Seraphim"

The reviewer in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine who asked, "What other pretty book is this?" discovered it to be The Seraphim, and Other Poems (1838)¹ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Barrett was thirty-two; she had already written an autobiography, Glimpses Into My Own Life and Literary Character (1820)², and published three volumes of poetry, The Battle of Marathon (1820), An Essay on Mind, With Other Poems (1826), and Poems, 1833. The Seraphim, however, was her first work both to receive a wide readership and extensive critical response, and...