by Fiona Sampson Review by Brian Morton Virginia Woolf said: “Fate has not been kind to Mrs Browning as a writer. Nobody reads her, nobody discusses her, nobody troubles to put her in her place.” One might argue that Mrs Woolf wasn’t very kind to her, either; when she turned her mind to Elizabeth Barrett Browning it was to write a biography of her dog Flush, and one wonders what, exactly, she means by “her place”. But the better part of a century later, her basic point is beyond argument. No-one reads EBB now; no-one reads poetry, whose public gamut starts with Armitage and ends with Zephaniah. Perhaps now and again, some young swain hoicks “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” out of an online dictionary of quotations for Valentine’s Day, but that’s it.
A much-needed reassessment : Fiona Sampson restores Elizabeth Barrett Browning to her proper place
Credit: Stock Montage/Getty
When Wordsworth died in 1850 and the post of Poet Laureate became vacant, one name that was widely canvassed in the press as his replacement was that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In the end, the honour went to Tennyson; it would take until 2009 for the first woman, Carol Ann Duffy, to fill the post.
That Barrett Browning was in the running says much about her status in her lifetime, though her literary reputation declined after her death. Her only poem that remains widely known today is the lyric “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”; her magnum opus of 1856, Aurora Leigh, a book-length verse narrative about the life of a fictional woman writer, is largely unread except by academics. During the 20th century, she was sentimentally repackaged in the play The Barretts of Wimpole Street, which inspired more than one Hollywood treatment. It painted
Updated / Thursday, 11 Feb 2021
09:30
Actress Paula McGlinchey features in this week s special Poetry Programme
Uncork the red wine, open the chocolates, and settle down for half an hour of love poetry when the
Poetry Programme marks St Valentine s Day on Sunday 14th February, at 7:30 pm on RTÉ Radio 1.
There will be old favourites and new writing, readings by actors and by poets themselves, some from the Poetry Programme’s own archive, and some you may not have heard before.
Owen Roe
Paula McGlinchey reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s
How Do I Love Thee?
A recording of Seamus Heaney reading his poem