Browning, Elizabeth Barrett.

[WOMEN]. Casa Guidi Windows. A Poem.

London: Chapman & Hall, 1851. Item #1368

Small 8vo. 170 x 110 mm., [6 ½ x 4 ¼ inches]. vii, [1], 140 pp. + 36 pp. publisher's catalogue bound at the end of the volume dated 1851. Original slate blue blind-stamped cloth, spine lettered in gilt. Near fine copy with no discoloration of the blue cloth. Owner's inscription on flyleaf of “Joanna Chapman from Exeter, October 30, 1851”, late 19^th century bookplate of AH, and small embossed stamp of Adam Holden of Exeter. Half blue morocco slipcase. A near Fine Copy.

First edition. In the advertisement to the book, which precedes the text, the publisher writes, “This Poem contains the impressions of the writer upon events in Tuscany of which she was a witness. . . It is a simple story of personal impressions, whose only value is in the intensity with which they are received, as proving her warm affection for a beautiful and unfortunate country. . .”

More recently Prof. Harris writes, “Elizabeth Barrett Browning, by contrast, masterfully tackles the problem of the emerging nation's political image in Victorian England . . . This poem, Barrett Browning's first full political and poetical response to Italy, represents a sophisticated example of nineteenth-century women's writing on Risorgimento Italy; it is, moreover, one of the most politically astute Victorian accounts of Italy written by either sex.”

Leigh Coral Harris. “From Mythos to Logos. Political Aesthetics and Liminal Poetics in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Casa Guidi Windows.” Victorian Literature and Culture, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 109-131.

Price: $600.00