Richard Henry Horne Critical Essay | Critical Essay by David Paroissien

Critical Essay by David Paroissien

SOURCE: Paroissien, David. “Mrs. Browning's Influence on and Contribution to A New Spirit of the Age (1844).” English Language Notes 8, no. 4 (June 1971): 274-81.

In the following essay, Paroissien examines the role Elizabeth Barrett Browning played in the writing of Horne's A New Spirit of the Age, arguing that evidence indicates her involvement was more extensive than Horne publicly acknowledged.

When Richard Hengist Horne (1803-84) published a survey of contemporary writers in 1884 called A New Spirit of the Age, he referred in his Preface to the “valuable assistance and advice from several eminent hands.” That the hands were several¹ or even “eminent” remains a matter for conjecture since Horne was both unwilling to identify his assistants and rather evasive about the degree of help he received from his only identified “hand,” Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Even as late as 1877, when S. R. Townshend Mayer collaborated with Horne...
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