Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Anna Brownell Jameson, 21 November 1846:
'We have seen your professor once since you left us [...] when he came in one evening &
caught us reading, sighing, yawning over Nicolo de' Lapi [sic], a romance by the son in law of
Manzoni. Before we could speak, he called it "excellent, tres beau," one of their very best
romances .. upon which, of course dear Robert could not bear to offend his literary & national
sensibilities by a doubt even. [italics]I[end italics], not being so humane, thought that any
suffering reader would be justified (under the rack-wheel) in crying out against such a book,
as the dullest, heaviest, stupidest, lengthiest. Did you ever read it? If not, [italics]dont[end
italics] [...] Robert in his zeal for Italy [...] tried to persuade me at first [...] that "really Ba, it
was'n't so bad" [...] but after two or three chapters, the dulness grew too strong, for even his
benevolence, & the yawning catastrophe overthrew him as completely as it ever did me,
though we both resolved to hold on by the stirrup to the end of the two volumes.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Henrietta Moulton-Barrett, 7 January 1847:
'If it were not for the Bible & Shakespeare, we might say seriously that we had not seen a real
book since our arrival in Pisa, until my great victory a few days ago, of the new subscription
[...] Now, we have every evening at five oclock, just as we sit down to coffee, a french
newspaper .. the Siecle'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Newspaper
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Cornelius Mathews, mid-January 1847:
'We live here in the most secluded manner, eschewing English visitors and reading Vasari'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to James and Julia Martin, 1 February 1847:
'We are reading (much at the latest) Custine's Russia'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Anna Brownell Jameson, 4 February 1847:
'By the grace of M. Ferucci, we have Vasari from the library, & are ploughing through it [...]
Really I do venture to think it a dull book. Perhaps when we reach his contemporaries, we
may find more flesh & blood.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 8 February 1847:
'The "Siecle" has for a feuilleton a new romance of Soulie's called "Saturnin Fichet," which is
really not good .. & tiresome to boot. Robert & I began by each of us reading it, but after a
little while he left me alone being certain that no good could come of such a work: so, of
course, ever since, I have been exclaiming & exclaiming as to the wonderful improvement &
increasing beauty & glory of it, .. just to justify myself, & to make him sorry for not having
persevered! The truth is, however, that but for obstinacy, I should give up too. Deplorably
dull, the story is, .. & there is a crowd of people each more indifferent than each'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Newspaper
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 8 February 1847:
'Robert is a warm admirer of Balzac & has read most of his books [...] we read together the
other day the "Rouge et Noir", that powerful book of Stendhal's ([Marie Henri] Bayle [sic]) &
he thought it very striking, & observed, .. what I had thought from the first again & again, ..
that it was exactly like Balzac [italics]in the raw[end italics] .. in the material, .. &
undevelopped [sic] conception. What a book it is really,only so full of pain & bitterness, & the
gall of iniquity!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Arabella Moulton-Barrett, 26 July 1847:
'We passed the time [at the monastery at Vallombrosa] till monday, .. reading the Life of San
Gualberto (who established the monastery) & learning from that only book within our reach,
how spiritual holiness & benediction float in the air of the place [...] & how no mortal soul can
approach the mountain, without partaking the sanctifying advantage.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Anna Brownell Jameson, mid-December 1847:
'We are going through some of old Sacchetti's novelets now: characteristic work for Florence,
if somewhat dull elsewhere [...] We got a newly printed addition to Savonarola's poems the
other day -- very flat & cold -- they did not catch fire when he was burnt. The most poetic
thing in the book, is his face on the first page, with that eager, devouring soul in the eyes of
it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Anna Brownell Jameson, mid-December 1847:
'We are going through some of old Sacchetti's novelets now: characteristic work for Florence,
if somewhat dull elsewhere [...] We got a newly printed addition to Savonarola's poems the
other day -- very flat & cold -- they did not catch fire when he was burnt. The most poetic
thing in the book, is his face on the first page, with that eager, devouring soul in the eyes of
it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 April 1847:
'At Pisa, Robert read to me while I was ill [following miscarriage], & partly by being read to &
partly by reading I got through a good deal of amusing French book-work, & among the rest,
two volumes of Bernard's new ["]Gentilhomme Campagnard." Rather dull I thought it, but
clever of course -- dull for Bernard. Then we read "Le Speronare" by Dumas -- a delightful
book of travels.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Anna Brownell Jameson, 1 October 1849:
'We have had much quiet enjoyment here [...] read some amusing books, (Dumas & Sue! -- shake your head!) & seen our child grow fuller of roses & understanding day by day.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Anna Brownell Jameson, 1 October 1849:
'We have had much quiet enjoyment here [...] read some amusing books, (Dumas & Sue! -- shake your head!) & seen our child grow fuller of roses & understanding day by day.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 2 October 1849:
'The [French] President's letter from Rome has delighted us -- A letter worth writing and reading! We read it first in the Italian papers (long before it was printed in Paris) and the amusing thing was, that where he speaks of the "hostile influences," (of the cardinals) they had misprinted it "orribili influenze", which must have turned still colder the blood in absolutist readers. The misprint was not corrected until long after -- more than a week, I think.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Newspaper
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 1 December 1849:
'We have had the sight of Clough & Burbidge, at last. Clough has more thought, Burbidge more music .. but I am disappointed in the book as a whole. What I like infinitely better, is Clough's "Bothie of Topernafuosich" a "long-vacation pastoral" written in loose & more-than-need-be unmusical hexameters, but full of vigour & freshness, & with whole passages & indeed whole scenes of great beauty & eloquence. It seems to have been written before the other poems [...] Oh, it strikes both Robert & me as being worth twenty of the other little book, with its fragmentary, dislocated, inartistic character. Arnold's volume has two good poems in it .. "The Sick King of Bokhara" [sic] & "The deserted Merman" [sic]. I liked them both -- But none of these writers are [italics]artists[end italics] whatever they may be in future days.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 1 December 1849:
'We have had the sight of Clough & Burbidge, at last. Clough has more thought, Burbidge more music .. but I am disappointed in the book as a whole. What I like infinitely better, is Clough's "Bothie of Topernafuosich" a "long-vacation pastoral" written in loose & more-than-need-be unmusical hexameters, but full of vigour & freshness, & with whole passages & indeed whole scenes of great beauty & eloquence. It seems to have been written before the other poems [...] Oh, it strikes both Robert & me as being worth twenty of the other little book, with its fragmentary, dislocated, inartistic character. Arnold's volume has two good poems in it .. "The Sick King of Bokhara" [sic] & "The deserted Merman" [sic]. I liked them both -- But none of these writers are [italics]artists[end italics] whatever they may be in future days.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Unknown
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 18 February 1850:
'Such a magical act as conjuring up for me the sight of a new poem by Alfred Tennyson, is unnecessary to prove you a right beneficent enchantress. Thank you, thank you [...] But now ... you know how free and sincere I am always! .. now tell me [...] apart from a certain sweetness & rise & fall in the rhythm, do you really see much for admiration in the poem. Is it [italics]new[end italics] in any way? [...] I do [italics]not[end italics] perceive much in this lyric, which strikes me, & Robert also (who goes with me throughout) as quite inferior to the other lyrical snatches in the Princess. By the way, if he introduces it in the Princess, it will be the only [italics]rhymed[end italics] verse in the work. Robert thinks that he was thinking of the Rhine-echoes in writing it'.
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Anna Brownell Jameson, 2 April 1850:
'I have read Shirley lately: it is not equal to Jane Eyre in spontaneousness & earnestness: I found it heavy, I confess, though in [...] the compositional savoir faire, there is an advance. Robert has exhumed some French books, just now, from a little circulating li[brary] which we had not tried -- and we have just been making ourselves uncomfortable over Balzac's "Cousin Pons". But what a wonderful writer he is! Who could have taken such a subject, out of the lowest mud of humaity, & glorified & consecrated it?'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Isa Blagden, ?27 July 1850:
'I return the "Confidences" with thanks upon thanks. Both Robert & I began with a sort of interest & pleasure, & ended with a sort of sickness of the book & the man. Weakness & falseness are two bad things indeed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
'The History of Pendennis (2 vols, 1849-50) by William Makepeace Thackeray was published by Bradbury and Evans in twenty-four numbers (twenty-three parts) from November 1848 to December 1850 [...] The edition the Brownings were reading, which had been lent to them by Charles Eliot Norton (see letter 2893 [in source]) was probably the one being published in Leipzig by Bernhard Tauchniz. Issued in three volumes from April 1849 to December 1850, the second volume appeared in March 1850'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Louisa Boyle, 5 December 1850:
'We live just as quietly as we used to do [...] One drawback is not being able to get new books till they are old -- in spite of which, we have just read "In Memoriam" -- how beautiful! -- how full of pathos, and subtle feeling & thought! [...] Then we have Carlyle's Latter day pamphlets .. powerful & characteristic -- and seventeen numbers of David Copperfield, which we both set down or rather set up as Dickens's masterpiece.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Louisa Boyle, 5 December 1850:
'We live just as quietly as we used to do [...] One drawback is not being able to get new books till they are old -- in spite of which, we have just read "In Memoriam" -- how beautiful! -- how full of pathos, and subtle feeling & thought! [...] Then we have Carlyle's Latter day pamphlets .. powerful & characteristic -- and seventeen numbers of David Copperfield, which we both set down or rather set up as Dickens's masterpiece.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Serial / periodical
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Louisa Boyle, 5 December 1850:
'We live just as quietly as we used to do [...] One drawback is not being able to get new books till they are old -- in spite of which, we have just read "In Memoriam" -- how beautiful! -- how full of pathos, and subtle feeling & thought! [...] Then we have Carlyle's Latter day pamphlets .. powerful & characteristic -- and seventeen numbers of David Copperfield, which we both set down or rather set up as Dickens's masterpiece.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Arabella Moulton-Barrett [sister], 16-19 December 1850, on 18 December:
'We have been reading together Tennyson's "In Memoriam" in the evenings. Most beautiful and pathetic. I read aloud, Robert looking over the page -- & we talked & admired & criticised every separate stanza. Now, we are going in like manner through Shelley.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
