This Norton Critical Edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s 1856 verse-novel is based on Margaret Reynolds’ variorum edition, which the British Academy awarded the 1993 Rose Mary Crawshay Prize and which is reprinted here by special arrangement with the Ohio University Press.
The text is accompanied by both explanatory annotations and textual notes."Backgrounds and Contexts" includes thirty letters or letter excerpts by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning that trace Aurora Leigh’s inception, evolution, and publication.
Seven contemporary documents—on the "woman question," prostitution, socialism, and poetic theory—place the text historically.
"Criticism" collects twenty-five assessments of Aurora Leigh from the period 1899–1993.
A wide range of opinion is provided by George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Ellen Moers, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Angela Leighton, Deirdre David, Dorothy Mermin, and Margaret Reynolds, among others.
A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.