Aurora Leigh

Written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and first published in 1856 at the height of the Romantic Movement, Aurora Leigh is a narrative novel in blank verse that divided critics by challenging the standard positions within contemporary debates regarding class and gender. Standing at nine books and 11,000 lines, it is the first feature-length poem in English that places a female artist at the center of the plot, and as such, it catapulted its equally atypical female author to near-poet laureate status and allowed her to achieve transatlantic fame during a time in which misogynist views were the norm. By simultaneously tapping into and subverting the 19th-century zeitgeist, Aurora Leigh critiques subjects such as social class, the Industrial Revolution, aesthetics, and religion, redefining the accepted social constructs of 19th-century British society from a decidedly feminist point of view. It was in part due to this singularity of form and content that Aurora Leigh was heralded by the eminent critic John Ruskin as “the greatest poem in the English language.” 

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide include references to commercial sexual exploitation, as well as discussions of rape.