TWO-WAY MIRROR

THE LIFE OF ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

FIONA SAMPSON

Profile, 322pp, £20

When Wordsworth died in 1850 Elizabeth Barrett Browning was considered as a possible successor to the laureateship, and that was six years before the publication of Aurora Leigh, her long blank verse novel about a poet’s becoming which became a best-seller. At the time of her death in 1861 EBB (as she signed herself ) was much more admired than her husband Robert, but her star fell in the decades which followed. Then the success of the 1931 play The Barretts of Wimpole Street made EBB better-known for her invalidism and her tyrant father than her blank verse. Robert Douglas Fairhurst in the

Spectator hailed Sampson’s biography as ‘a bold attempt to understand EBB before her reputation started to ebb’, while disliking the author’s occasional attempts ‘to turn her into a more contemporary figure… with references to “virtue-signalling” and “snowflakes” that are themselves likely to sound outdated before too long’.

Laura Freeman in the Times found Sampson ‘an astute, thoughtful and wide-ranging guide’ but disliked her use of the historic present as in ‘“Elizabeth is in bed again”, “Elizabeth is starting to write again”. What ought to give a sense of urgency instead sounds forced and breathless.’ She also felt the essayistic frames about the nature of biography with which Sampson began each section were a nuisance – ‘Better to hear Elizabeth’s own voice: restless, ambitious, unsatisfied.’ Frances Wilson in the Daily Mail agreed that the frames were ‘a tad selfindulgent… most readers will skip them in order to get on with the story itself, which is beautifully told’.