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"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." With these words,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning has come down to us as a romantic
heroine, a recluse controlled by a domineering father and often
overshadowed by her husband, Robert Browning. But behind the
melodrama lies a thoroughly modern figure whose extraordinary life
is an electrifying study in self-invention. Born in 1806, Barrett
Browning lived in an age when women could not attend a university,
own property after marriage, or vote. And yet she seized control of
her private income, defied chronic illness and disability, became
an advocate for the revolutionary Italy to which she eloped, and
changed the course of cultural history. Her late-in-life verse
novel masterpiece, Aurora Leigh, reveals both the brilliance and
originality of her mind, as well as the challenges of being a woman
writer in the Victorian era. A feminist icon, high-profile activist
for the abolition of slavery, and international literary superstar,
Barrett Browning inspired writers as diverse as Emily Dickinson,
George Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, Oscar Wilde, and Virginia Woolf.
Two-Way Mirror is the first biography of Barrett Browning in more
than three decades. With unique access to the poet’s abundant
correspondence, “astute, thoughtful, and wide-ranging guide”
(Times [UK]) Fiona Sampson holds up a mirror to the woman, her art,
and the art of biography itself.
'A nourishing, occasionally provoking hybrid of group biography,
cultural criticism and travelogue that seeks to restore to
Romanticism its radicalism, and also show just how much the
countryside shaped its manifesto' Hephzibah Anderson, Mail on
Sunday '"Romanticism isn't a cultural artefact," [Sampson] writes.
"It's a way for thought to move." She is taking her own mind for a
walk and [...] the essence is intellectual and fully freighted. The
cast list is long and international and the method shifting, subtle
and demanding' Adam Nicolson, Guardian For the Romantics, the
countryside was a place of radical change. But those real life
experiences have been overlaid by two centuries of cliché. To
rediscover - and learn from - their radicalism we need to find a
fresh approach. In this extraordinary hybrid of scholarship,
biography, cultural history, travelogue and lifewriting, acclaimed
poet and Romantic biographer Fiona Sampson does just that. As she
walks the British countryside, from the Isle of Wight to Kintyre,
her evocative and thought-provoking book helps us see clearly
what's hiding in plain sight.
Poetry Review is the Poetry Society's internationally acclaimed
quarterly poetry magazine, published in March, June, September and
December.
Shortlisted for the 2022 Plutarch Award A Washington Post 2021
Non-Fiction Book of the Year New York Times Review of Books
Editors' Choice Non-Fiction Title Longlisted for the 2022 PEN /
Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography A Sunday Times Best
Paperback of 2022 'Brilliant, heart-stopping ... reads like a
thriller, a memoir and a provocative piece of literary fiction all
at the same time ... magical and compelling' Washington Post 'How
do I love thee? Let me count the ways,' Elizabeth Barrett Browning
famously wrote, shortly before defying her family by running away
to Italy with Robert Browning. But behind the romance of her
extraordinary life stands a thoroughly modern figure, who remains
an electrifying study in self-invention. Elizabeth was born in
1806, a time when women could neither attend university nor vote,
and yet she achieved lasting literary fame. She remains Britain's
greatest woman poet, whose work has inspired writers from Emily
Dickinson to George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. This vividly written
biography, the first full study for over thirty years, incorporates
recent archival discoveries to reveal the woman herself: a literary
giant and a high-profile activist for the abolition of slavery who
believed herself to be of mixed heritage; and a writer who defied
chronic illness and long-term disability to change the course of
cultural history. It holds up a mirror to the woman, her art - and
the art of biography itself.
WINNER OF THE WALES POETRY BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2021 Winner of
the Naim Frasheri Laureateship of Albania and Macedonia Winner of
the European Lyric Atlas Prize 'Fiona Sampson's voice is something
new and it's a delight to hear it . . . A joy to read' W. S. Merwin
Questions of humanity, of point of view, are at the heart of Fiona
Sampson's new collection, Come Down. Throughout, Sampson's poems
shimmer between the human perspective and what is beyond - some
larger, longer-term consciousness. Language runs and dances over
the stuff of the human body and the material of the landscape. And
yet, despite these radical perspective shifts, the collection keeps
in sight, always, the human experience: the act of creation; the
way in which childhood memory and family lore impinge on the
present. Come Down ends with a long, eponymous poem, which moves
fluidly and brilliantly through different forms of memory.
A Washington Post 2021 Non-Fiction Book of the Year New York Times
Review of Books Editors' Choice Non-Fiction Title Longlisted for
the 2022 PEN / Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography
'Beautifully told. It is high time Elizabeth Barrett Browning and
Aurora Leigh were once again household names.' Mail on Sunday 'How
do I love thee? Let me count the ways,' Elizabeth Barrett Browning
famously wrote, shortly before defying her family by running away
to Italy with Robert Browning. But behind the romance of her
extraordinary life stands a thoroughly modern figure, who remains
an electrifying study in self-invention. Elizabeth was born in
1806, a time when women could neither attend university nor vote,
and yet she achieved lasting literary fame. She remains Britain's
greatest woman poet, whose work has inspired writers from Emily
Dickinson to George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. This vividly written
biography, the first full study for over thirty years, incorporates
recent archival discoveries to reveal the woman herself: a literary
giant and a high-profile activist for the abolition of slavery who
believed herself to be of mixed heritage; and a writer who defied
chronic illness and long-term disability to change the course of
cultural history. It holds up a mirror to the woman, her art - and
the art of biography itself.
Mary Shelley was brought up by her father in a house filled with radical thinkers, poets, philosophers and writers of the day. Aged sixteen, she eloped with Percy Bysshe Shelley, embarking on a relationship that was lived on the move across Britain and Europe, as she coped with debt, infidelity and the deaths of three children, before early widowhood changed her life forever. Most astonishingly, it was while she was still a teenager that Mary composed her canonical novel Frankenstein, creating two of our most enduring archetypes today.
The life story is well-known. But who was the woman who lived it? She's left plenty of evidence, and in this fascinating dialogue with the past, Fiona Sampson sifts through letters, diaries and records to find the real woman behind the story. She uncovers a complex, generous character - friend, intellectual, lover and mother - trying to fulfil her own passionate commitment to writing at a time when to be a woman writer was an extraordinary and costly anomaly.
Published for the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein, this is a major new work of biography by a prize-winning writer and poet.
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Selected Poems (Paperback)
Jaan Kaplinski; Translated by Fiona Sampson, Sam Hamill, Hildi Hawkins, Jaan Kaplinski
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R407
R332
Discovery Miles 3 320
Save R75 (18%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Estonia's Jaan Kaplinski (1941-2021) was one of Europe's major
poets, and one of his country's best-known writers and cultural
figures. He was a member of the new post-Revolution Estonian
parliament in 1992-95 and his essays on cultural transition and the
challenges of globalisation are published across the Baltic region.
This selection includes work previously unpublished in English as
well as poems drawn from all four of his previous UK collections:
The Same Sea in Us All, The Wandering Border, Through the Forest
and Evening Brings Everything Back.
Mary Shelley, whose Frankenstein is the foundation of modern SF,
fantasy and horror fiction, was born to the writer William Godwin
and social campaigner Mary Wollstonecraft. This new, special
collection brings together extracts of her novels and short
stories, with an emphasis on the supernatural.
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