In February 1845, Elizabeth Barrett wrote to Robert Browning that she was contemplating “a sort of novel poem” on modern themes which would challenge the conventions of her day. But, she continued, she was “waiting for a story”. That story, which would become her great work Aurora Leigh, came to her five years later, after her marriage to Browning and after she had completed her political meditations on the Italian Risorgimento, published in 1851 as Casa Guidi Windows. The fictional autobiography of a woman poet (not herself, Barrett Browning insisted), Aurora Leigh is a bold synthesis of lyric and narrative elements, literary and social theory. It is Barrett Browning's strongest claim to fame and a foundational text for women poets, feminist activists, and feminist literary scholars, who in the 1970s began recovering the work from...
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Citation: Sanders Pollock, Mary. "Aurora Leigh". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 July 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6473, accessed 13 December 2025.]
