The Complete Works of Mrs. E. B. Browning/Volume 1/Editors' Preface
EDITORS' PREFACE.
In preparing this first fully annotated edition of the complete works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, upon the same general plan as their edition of Robert Browning, the editors have found a virtually unbroken field, so far as notes or explanatory comment upon the allusions employed in the poems are concerned. These allusions are drawn from a wide range of book-culture and a lively acquaintance with the political history of Italy, France, and England. This mass of underlying knowledge is touched upon lightly but constantly by the poet and woven into her work, now by one strand, now by another, as suits her poetic purpose. The result is that her allusions are often blind, but distinctive and interesting, and it is hoped that the elucidation of them here given will be found useful.
The text is based, primarily, upon the author's latest revision appearing in the six-volume edition published after her death under the authority of Robert Browning. For the Juvenilia and scattered poems not included in that edition, the text is based upon the collection and chronological arrangement of Mr. F. G. Kenyon.
To the translations and prose essays collected in the last volume are added, for the first time in any edition, Mr. Horne's account of "Psyche Apocalypté," a drama projected by the poet, the translations from Gregory Nazianzen, and the brief prose pieces upon Carlyle and Tennyson, upon Italy and America, and "A Thought on Thoughts."
The Chronological Bibliography will be found completer than any preceding one, including the entry of the various poems first published in America and not recorded in British or other editions earlier than this.
While acknowledgment is given with pleasure of indebtedness to the work of preceding biographers and to the various collections of the letters of the poet, to the "Browning Love Letters," the best commentary on the "Sonnets from the Portuguese," the editors feel peculiarly indebted for light upon the "Sonnets" and on the poet's life; and they desire especially to thank the Messrs. Harper & Brothers, the publishers of these "Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett," for their courteous permission to make quotation from them.
To the Boston Browning Society, whose valuable collection of first editions was consulted, thanks are also due most cordially, and to its president, Mr. Prentiss Cummings, who has authorized the photograph, taken for this edition, of one of the Society's treasures, the bronze cast, by Harriet Hosmer, of the hands of Mr. and Mrs. Browning.
The marble bust of Mrs. Browning, by W. W. Story, adorning the Wellesley "Browning Room," has also been photographed, for the first time, for this edition, and it is a pleasure to the editors to record here their appreciation of this privilege granted them by Miss Caroline Hazard, the President of Wellesley College.
Boston, July 15, 1900.