Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism > Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning - George Eliot (review date 1857)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

George Eliot (review date 1857)

SOURCE: Review of Aurora Leigh, in Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review, Vol. XI, No. 1, January, 1857, pp. 306-10.

[In the following excerpt, Eliot praises Aurora Leigh's emotive power, claiming that it is Browning's infusion of "genuine thought and feeling" that distinguishes the work from those of her contemporaries.]

Foster, the essayist, has somewhere said that the person who interests us most is the one that most gives us the idea of ample being. Applying this remark to books, which are but persons in a transmigrated form, we discern one grand source of the profound impression produced in us by Aurora Leigh¹. Other poems of our own day may have higher finish, or a higher degree of certain poetic qualities; but no poem embraces so wide a range of thought and emotion, or takes such complete possession of our nature. Mrs. Browning is, perhaps, the first woman...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Criticism
   1. Henry Fothergill Chorley (review date 1856)
   2. Coventry Patmore (review date 1856/57)
   3. William Edmondstoune Aytoun (review date 1857)
   4. George Eliot (review date 1857)
   5. W. C. Roscoe (review date 1857)
   6. C. C. Everett (review date 1857)
   7. Algernon Charles Swinburne (essay date 1898)
   8. Martha Hale Shackford (essay date 1935)
   9. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar (essay date 1979)
   10. Kathleen K. Hickok (essay date 1980)
   11. Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi (essay date 1981)
   12. Dorothy Mermin (essay date 1986)
   13. Angela Leighton (essay date 1986)
   14. Margaret Reynolds (essay date 1992)
3. Secondary Sources:
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright