Elizabeth Barrett Browning, /Aurora Leigh/ (1856)
lines addressed to a future self who no longer finds me charming
I reflect often on the opening lines of Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s semi-autobiographical verse novel. Over its nine volumes, the long poem compiles so many of the tropes and subplots of Victorian fiction’s sentimental romances, that it feels almost Dickensian in its density. It relates the career and eventual marriage of a young woman po…