Beschreibung:

BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT Poems. London: Chapman & Hall, 1850. "New edition" [i.e. second collection of her poems], with the usual second state title with the corrected address--includes the first edition of the Sonnets from the Portuguese, which appeared without fanfare as pp. 428-480 in the second volume; as well as a number of other previously unpublished pieces. Two volumes, 20th century red morocco, decorative paper sides, top edges gilt. 6 1/2 x 4 1/8 inches (17 x 10 cm); xii, 362, [1] pp.; viii, 480 pp. Light binding wear, internally a clean copy, though lacking half-titles and terminal blanks. Written between 1845-46, the forty-four sonnets in the Portuguese sequence were not separately published until this 1850 edition of her poems (the suppositious 1847 Reading edition is, of course, a Thomas J. Wise forgery of about 1890). Robert Browning (for whom they were written) urged her to publish them, although she initially felt them too personal for that. Taken as a sequence, they are among the finest essays in the sonnet form in the English language, with works such as sonnet 42 "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" now durably ensconced in the literary pantheon. Barnes A6. C