In 1858, Rosina Bulwer Lytton was incarcerated in a lunatic asylum by her husband, the eminent Victorian politician and novelist, Edward Bulwer Lytton. After the disintegration of their marriage, Rosina wrote letters to prominent figures in which she revealed details about Edward's mistresses and illegitimate children.
First published in 1994, these two volumes are intended as a supplement to the four-volume edition edited by Gordon N. Ray in 1945-46. In writing to his broad range of correspondents, Thackeray produced a varied body of letters that will help readers to better understand his nineteenth-century society as well as his professional and private life — especially his relationships with women. These volumes contain 1713 letters: 1464 to and from Thackeray that were not included in the earlier volumes, and 249 with texts that have been edited from newly available manuscripts, and that thereby replace texts that were printed in Ray from incomplete sources.
Browning's lyrics are favourite choices for anthologies but are rarely examined closely. This is the first full-length study of the lyrics, and includes detailed analyses of such well-known poems as Love Among the Ruins, Two in the Campagna, A Serenade at the Villa, A Toccata of Galuppi's, By the Fireside, and James Lee's Wife. Eleanor Cook explores Browning's use of repeated images and themes in the lyrics, examines these patterns in other poems and in his letters, and analyses their growth and change in all his work. She demonstrates how the lyrics may be linked with Browning's other work and shows something of his essential artistic unity. His imaginary is found to be more consistent and complex than is usually assumed. Students of Browning will find this work stimulating and instructive, while lovers of Browning will read it with pure pleasure. The reader will return to many of the poems with a rciher sense of their continuing vitality. In an earlier form this study was awarded the first A.S.P. Woodhouse Prize by the University of Toronto.
Robert Browning's friendship for Isabella Blagden was almost as remarkable as was his love for Elizabeth Barrett. After Elizabeth's death (June 1861), Browning went to England to educate their son, but he hoped eventually to return to Italy, principally so that he might be near his friend "Isa." He asked her to write to him once a month on the twelfth, promising to answer her letter on the nineteenth. The fulfillment of this obligation resulted in a correspondence which is remarkable from the standpoint of continuity. Most collections of letters suffer from their fragmentary form; there are no continuing threads of interest which hold them together. Not so the letters which Browning wrote to Miss Blagden. They are not in the great English letter writing tradition, being obviously written for Isa rather than for posterity, but they are filled with the most intimate and interesting sort of gossip and informal exchanges of ideas which give them a character all their own. One hundred and fifty-four letters from Browning to Isabella Blagden are known to be in existence; all of them are included in the present volume, together with copious explanatory notes and an illuminating introduction. Edward C. McAleer has approached every detail of his editorial task with thoroughness, imagination, and skill. His notes will add immeasurably to the pleasure of reading the letters, in addition to making a substantial contribution to the world's knowledge of Browning and his associates.
This volume presents 1,592 letters, 668 of them previously unpublished, for the years 1850 to 1852. This was a time of great activity for Dickens, who completed the serial publication of David Copperfield, began work on Bleak House, successfully established the weekly Household Words (in which his own serial A Child's History of England appeared), and wrote about 100 articles and stories for the journal, including many uncollected pieces. In April 1851 he and Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton founded the Guild of Literature and Art, a scheme to help writers and artists. He also suffered a number of personal blows: the deaths of his father, his baby daughter Dora, and two of his close friends, Richard Watson and Alfred D'Orsay; there was also anxiety over the illness of his wife Catherine.
