Aurora Leigh cover art

Aurora Leigh

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Aurora Leigh

By: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Narrated by: Diana Quick
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About this listen

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s classic poem, read by Diana Quick.

Written in blank verse, Aurora Leigh is Browning’s self-styled ‘novel in verse’, a first-person narration of the lives of Marian Erle and the eponymous Aurora. Travelling across Florence, London, and Paris, and playing off the works of Anne Louise Germaine de Staël and George Sand, Aurora Leigh is one of the greatest poems of the nineteenth century.

©2015 Elizabeth Barrett Browning (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers Limited Classics European Poetry World Literature

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I came to this having listened to an episode of In our Time about Elizabeth Barrett Browning which gave a lot of emphasis to this novel in blank verse. I’d never heard of it before and, if I had, would not have been particularly tempted by the thought of it. The contributors to the programme were hugely enthusiastic about it, so I decided to give it a try.
This is only an abridged version, so I don’t know how how much I missed, but EBB’s heroine is delightful and independent. She makes one career when she finds she has no money and very firmly turns down a proposal on the basis of what she saw as it fixing her wifely role.
The other main female character, Marian Earl (apparently the pun is deliberate) comes from a desperate childhood, has dreadful things happening to her, but is also resolute and independent, without being sentimentalised.

The narration is very good, while the verse structure is there the narrator is careful not to make it intrusive.

Nineteenth century feminism

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Poor Romney has a terrible time. Don't worry boys, he's only a symbolic sacrifice 🤕

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