‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.’

The opening line from Elizabeth Barett Browning’s sonnet to her future husband, Robert Browning, lands a punch that still seizes the attention today. But in the 19th century, when poems seldom had a female narrator, it was unseemly, shocking, and revolutionary.

A formidably intelligent woman with a deep sense of social conscience, Barrett Browning is nos regarded as one of the great Romantic poets. This collection contains lyric, ballad, and narrative verse with themes ranging from the social criticism of ‘The Cry of the Children’ to the romantic ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship’ to the spirituality of ‘Human Life’s Mystery’. In a style that is both experimental and courageous, Barrett Browning views matter personal, historical, religious, and political, with clear and compassionate eye.