Tag Archives: Baylor University

More Literary Allusions in Downton Abbey — Stowe and Byron

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dowager

There were two more literary allusions in this week’s episode of Downton Abbey, both of which connect to the Brownings.

When Lord Grantham and Mr. Drewe, the son of the recently deceased tenant farmer, are discussing whether or not he will be allowed to remain as a tenant, Lord Grantham says he is no “Simon Legree.” This, of course, is a reference to the cruel slave dealer in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible.

harriet-beecher-stoweThe author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was one of the many American correspondents of the Brownings. (Soon the Armstrong Browning Library will shortly be featuring an exhibit, “…from America: The Brownings’ American Correspondents.) There are six recorded letters between the Brownings and Harriet Beecher Stowe between 1857 and 1861, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning makes references to Stowe in six more letters. One of these letters is in the collection at the Armstrong Browning Library.

Stowe Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Harriet Beecher Stowe
[?24 March 1860]

Fifteen Harriet Beecher Stowe books are in the ABL’s collection, including a first edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Among the books are two volumes of Stowe’s poetry, which are in the digital collection of 19th Century Women Poets. 

The other literary allusion focused on Lord Byron. Lord Grantham is complimented on his rather pithy statement about the past and the future. His dowager mother responds, “It was too good. One thing we don’t want is a poet in the family.” When Isobel Crawley asks if that would be a bad thing, the dowager answers, “The only poet peer I am familiar with is Lord Byron. And I presume we all know how that ended.” The dowager was referring to Byron’s divorce, remarriage, accusations against him of sodomy and incest, his affairs, and his eventual flight from England to Italy. Obviously, his lifestyle was not the sort that the dowager would approve.

The Brownings, however, admirers of Byron’s poetry owned ten copies of Byron’s work, two portraits of the poet, and a copy of Byron’s verses in an unidentified hand.

Robert makes this reference to Byron in a love letter he wrote to Elizabeth Barrett Browning on August 22, 1846:

Ba, Lord Byron is altogether in my affection again .. I have read on to the end, and am quite sure of the great qualities which the last ten or fifteen years had partially obscured- Only a little longer life and all would have been gloriously right again. I read this book of Moore’s [Letters and Journals of Lord Byron: with Notices of His Life by Thomas Moore, 1830] too long ago: but I always retained my first feeling for Byron in many respects .. the interest in the places he had visited, in relics of him: I would at any time have gone to Finchley to see a curl of his hair or one of his gloves, I am sure–while Heaven knows that I could not get up enthusiasm enough to cross the room if at the other end of it all Wordsworth, Coleridge & Southey were condensed into the little china bottle yonder, after the Rosicrucian fashion .. they seem to “have their reward” and want nobody’s love or faith.

Byron 1 Byron2

Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett Browning
22 August 1846

Robert Browning’s life offers some parallels to Lord Byron’s and some differences. Although his marriage to EBB was clandestine, he was a devoted and loving husband. He did leave England to live in Italy, but his leaving was not under duress, and he did return to England often and freely.

Notes and Queries:

Could other similarities and differences be found in the lives of these great poets?

Melinda Creech

Literary and Historical Allusions in Downton Abbey, Season 4

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kiriContinuing to tease out a bond between the historical milieu of Highclere Castle, which is the setting for the PBS drama Downton Abbey, and the real world of Robert Browning, I have found a literary and an historical allusion in Season 4 of Downton Abbey that may provide a tenuous connection to Robert Browning.

Trying to draw Isobel Crawley, mother of recently deceased Matthew Crawley, out of her mourning, Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham, quotes the last two lines of Christina Rossetti’s poem, “Remember:”

remember-1

Christina Rossetti. “Remember”
from Goblin Market and Other Poems.  
Cambridge, London: Macmillan and Co., 1862, p. 58

Isobel reminds Dame Crawley that in the poem Christina Rossetti is talking about her own death, not the death of her child.

Robert Browning corresponded with Christina Rossetti. In fact, the Armstrong Browning Library owns a letter written by Christina Rossetti to Robert Browning, dated 21 December 1869, in which she extends an invitation to attend a gathering at her home. “Remember” was published in Goblin Market and Other Poems, which was part of Robert Browning’s library. The frontispiece and vignette title page were illustrated by Christina’s brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who also corresponded with the Brownings. The ABL’s advance copy of this work was sent to Robert Browning by the Rossetti family and remained in his library until his death.

Goblin-Market-1Christina Rossetti. Goblin Market and Other Poems.  
Cambridge, London: Macmillan and Co., 1862.

Also in Episode 1, a famous Australian opera singer, Dame Nellie Melba, sings “Songs My Mother Taught Me,” a song for voice and piano written in 1880 by Antonín Dvořák. It is the fourth of seven songs from his cycle Gypsy Songs. The English lyrics for the song are:

Songs my mother taught me, In the days long vanished;
Seldom from her eyelids were the teardrops banished.
Now I teach my children, each melodious measure.
Oft the tears are flowing, oft they flow from my memory’s treasure.

Antonín Dvořák, “Songs My Mother Taught Me,” (No. 4 in: Zigeunermelodien, Op. 55),German  words, Adolph Heyduk; English words, Mrs. Natalia Macfarren, Berlin: N. Simrock [1880].

Robert Browning and Antonín Dvořák were contemporaries. According to Musical World, 28 February 1885, the song, which was very popular at the time, was to be performed at St. James Hall that very afternoon. Antonín Dvořák visited England nine times in all, but I have yet to find evidence that their paths crossed.

Dame Nellie Melba, the character portrayed by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, is the first historical character to be featured on Downton Abbey. In the episode, she sang Dvorak’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me” and a selection from Puccini. Dame Nellie was a famous performer during Browning’s lifetime. In fact, Melba toast and peach Melba were created in her name by famed chef Auguste Escoffier. Her debut in London at Covent Garden was in May 1888, the year before Browning’s death. She was twenty-seven years old.

Dame-Nellie-Melba-as-Ophelia1_11402134_tcm11-17655Dame Nellie Melba as “Ophelie,” circa 1889.

Courtesy of the National Archives of Australia

Melinda Creech

Notes and Queries: Thus far I have not been able to directly connect Robert Browning to either Dvorak or Dame Nellie. Does anyone know of a connection?

Commemorating Robert Browning at Westminster Abbey

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By Cynthia A. Burgess, Librarian/Curator of Books & Printed Materials

December 12, 2013 was the 124th anniversary of the death of Victorian poet Robert Browning.  Although he died in Venice, Italy while visiting his son and daughter-in-law, he was given the great honor of being buried at Poets’ Corner in London’s Westminster Abbey, and his body was interred there on December 31st, the final day of 1889.

On December 2nd I had the privilege of attending the annual service of commemoration at Browning’s grave sponsored by The Browning Society [UK].  For many years a solemn ceremony has been held there and wreaths have been laid on Browning’s grave on or near the date of the poet’s death.  The Armstrong Browning Library has participated in the ceremony for decades, by having a wreath laid on behalf of the Library, and, whenever possible, by having a group in attendance.

Nancy Jackson with a wreath
at Robert Browning’s grave

This year the Armstrong Browning Library’s group included, in addition to me, Pattie Orr, Baylor University’s Vice-President of Information Technology and Dean of University Libraries; Nancy Jackson, Baylor alumna and former chair of the Library Board of Advisors; and Baylor alumna Patty Burgess.  The ABL’s party also included invited guests:  Xenia Dennen, Director of The Keston Institute, and her husband, Ven. Dr. Lyle Dennen, former Archdeacon of Hackney, now Guild Vicar of St. Andrew, Holborn; and David Rymill, Archivist, Hampshire Archives and Local Studies, and archivist to the Highclere Estate.

Dean Pattie Orr and David Rymill in Poets’ Corner at
Westminster Abbey

Following an Evensong service, sung beautifully by the Lay Vicars of Westminster Abbey, approximately 40 Browning admirers and enthusiasts moved quietly from the Abbey’s nave to nearby Poets’ Corner.  There on the floor is a marble slab — a dark brown center framed by pale gold stone, with, simply, Browning’s name and his birth and death dates marking the place of burial.  Browning lies next to Alfred, Lord Tennyson and near Charles Dickens, his contemporaries and friends; at his feet is the grave of Geoffrey Chaucer, and close at hand, the resting places of other great writers — John Dryden, Samuel Johnson, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy.  Memorial stones on the floor and the walls name others, not buried, but honored there.  On the floor near Browning’s grave is the newest memorial stone, placed in honor of Clive Staples Lewis only weeks ago.

Following a welcome and a prayer, a short address by Dr. Pamela Neville-Sington, the author of biographies of both Robert Browning and Fanny Trollope, revealed the profound influence of Robert Browning’s poetry on the great Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.  Dr. Neville-Sington then placed a wreath on Browning’s grave for The Browning Society, followed by The Reverend Clive Dunnico laying a wreath for The Robert Browning Settlement (a community service organization), and Nancy Jackson laying a wreath decorated with bells and pomegranates for the Armstrong Browning Library.  I was honored to place a wreath for The Friends of Casa Guidi (an organization supporting the care of the Brownings’ home in Florence).

Cynthia Burgess and Nancy Jackon
laying wreaths on Robert Browning’s grave

Final prayers and a blessing ended the brief but moving ceremony.  Robert Browning is still remembered and his poetry valued nearly a century and a quarter after his death.

Giving Nineteenth Century Women Writers a Voice and a Face — Mary Augusta Arnold Ward (1851-1920)

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“You invite me to break the first law of storytelling, Miss Rose,” said the doctor, lifting a finger at her. “Every man is bound to leave a story better than he found it.”

  Mrs. Humphry Ward. Robert Elsmere.
London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1888, p. 63.

Mary Augusta Ward was an English novelist, journalist, philanthropist, and anti-suffrage leader who wrote under the name of Mrs. Humphry Ward. During her lifetime, she wrote three plays, nine non-fiction works, and twenty-five novels. Many of her novels depict contemporary theological and moral debates. Her most famous novel, Robert Elsmere, focuses on religious issues.

Mary Augusta Ward. Robert Elsmere. London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1888.

This novel was Ward’s most famed work due to the controversial “deconversion” of its main character from Anglican Christianity to “a liberal, antidogmatic theology.” The story was inspired in part by her own experience with the Victorian religious crisis and by the religious indecision of her father, Thomas Arnold. W. E. Gladstone, a prominent English politician and a four–time Prime Minister, wrote a response to Ward’s work, noting that Mrs. Ward’s aim was to “expel the preternatural element from Christianity, to destroy its dogmatic structure, yet to keep intact the moral and spiritual results.”

Her social and political novels portray her conservative beliefs, concerning both liberalism and feminism. According to Judith Wilt, Professor of English Emerita at Boston College, Ward was concerned with “…the ideal of domesticity crossed by currents of personal ambition and clear-eyed impatience with the limitations of a woman’s life evident in the ideology of separate spheres.” Wilt continues stating, “As a young matron Ward was ‘all afire’ for women’s education…and she continued to see as part of the inherited ‘domestic’ territory to be legislated and run by women as well as men not only all branches of education but also all health and social service professions, and even “local government,” including school boards, municipal boards, and other offices and activities that had become gender-neutrally votable and electable by the 1880’s. For her, ‘domesticity’ included virtually all the national business.  When in her anti-suffrage campaigns she drew the line at giving women the vote for Parliament members it was partly a not-unhealthy impatience with what we might now call the fetishization of that object, and partly a curtsy before Empire, a hesitation before the international ministries for finance, heavy industry, and war.” (Judith Wilt, Behind Her Times: Transition England In The Novels Of Mary Arnold Ward, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, p. 14.)

The Armstrong Browning Library owns forty-one volumes authored by Mary Ward, including Fenwick’s Career, which was published in London by Smith, Elder, & Co. in 1906. This edition was printed on hand-made paper. Only two hundred and fifty copies were for sale with each copy autographed by the author. The ABL’s copy is No. 36, and is signed “Mary A. Ward” on the first front leaf. The book tells the story about “a boorish, conceited, masterful young countryman…[whose] supreme longing is ‘to make a name for himself and to leave his mark on English art.”

 

Autograph by the author, Mary Augusta Ward, on the first front leaf of Fenwick’s Career, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1906.

Fannie Browning, wife of Robert Barrett Browning, owned a copy of Amiel’s Journal (1896), which was translated by Mrs. Ward; Robert Barrett Browning, Robert and Elizabeth’s son, owned a copy of The Marriage of William Ashe (1905), with the author’s inscription. Although the Armstrong Browning Library does not own this book, it does have a copy of the same edition once owned by Robert Barrett Browning.

 Tiffany Huynh
Maegan Rocio
Michael Moreno
Melinda Creech

Giving Nineteenth Century Women Writers a Voice and a Face continued…

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  continued…

In the fall semester of 2013, Dr. Kristen Pond, Assistant Professor of English at Baylor University, taught a class entitled “English 4370: ‘A Mob of Scribbling Women’: Women and the Novel 1740’s-1860’s.” The class title comes from a quotation from Nathaniel Hawthorne, an American novelist and short story writer responding to his publisher in 1855: “America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women.” He, along with others, found the figure of the woman writer troubling in the nineteenth century. Dr. Pond’s course was organized around the social, economic, and political factors that began to reshape women’s role in society.

Recognizing the contribution that the class could make toward refreshing and extending the current exhibit, Giving Nineteenth Century Women Writers A Voice and a Face, the class was invited to add their own research to the exhibit. The students, working as teams, selected a woman writer whose work is represented in the ABL’s collection, gathered interesting information about her, decided what to display and how to display it, prepared the labels for the exhibit, and wrote a blogpost about their woman writer. The blogs (soon to be posted) will focus on Caroline Sheridan Norton, Margaret Fuller, Mary Augusta Arnold Ward, Charlotte Endymion Porter, and Daisy Ashford.

The Armstrong Browning Library staff would like to thank the students for their interest in discovering the resources that the library has to offer and for their expertise in Giving Nineteenth Century Women Writers a Voice and a Face.

Giving Nineteenth Century Women Writers a Voice and a Face — Michael Field [Katherine Harris Bradley (1846–1914) and Edith Emma Cooper (1862–1913)]

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Michael Field was the pen name used by Katherine Harris Bradley and her niece Edith Emma Cooper, who wrote together under the same pseudonym. Katherine Bradley became the legal guardian of her sister’s daughter, Edith Cooper, and the two eventually became lovers. Katherine published several works under the pseudonym Arran Leigh, and Edith published under Isla Leigh, before they eventually co-authored works of poetry and verse drama under the name Michael Field. The women were friends of Robert Browning (whom they called the “Old Gentleman”) and his sister, Sarianna.

Michael Field. The Father’s Tragedy. William Rufus. Loyalty or Love? London: George Bell, 1885.

This volume, inscribed “R. Browning Esq./ with sincere regards./ Michael Field./ June 8th 1885,” is a presentation copy and contains a note in Robert Browning’s hand and numerous penciled corrections to the text, presumably by the elder poet.

The ABL has thirty-two books written by Michael Field and published during the authors’ lifetimes, several being first editions or containing inscriptions. The Father’s Tragedy. William Rufus. Loyalty or Love? ([1885]), Long Ago (1889), Underneath the Bough: A Book of Verses (1893), and Attila, my Attila! A Play (1895) were part of the Brownings’ library. Sight and Song (1892) is the same edition as a volume of that work that was owned by Sarianna Browning.

Melinda Creech

Giving Nineteenth Century Women Writers a Voice and a Face — Amy Judith Levy (1861–1889)

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Amy Levy. “Philosophy” in A London Plane-tree, and Other Verse (1899)

 Amy Levy was a precocious feminist, reviewing Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh when she was only thirteen. She wrote lyric poems, dramatic monologues, essays, stories, and novels. Through her writings, she focused  attention on Jewish identity, feminist positions, and homosexual relationships. She struggled with “constitutional melancholy” and eventually committed suicide. The Armstrong Browning Library owns one title by Amy Levy. Logo from A London Plane-tree, and Other Verse. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1889.

The volume owned by the ABL is a first edition, number 21 of 30 copies, signed by the publisher. An inscription on the recto of the leaf following the title-page states: “The proofs of this volume were corrected by the Author about a week before her death.”

Melinda Creech

Giving Nineteenth Century Women Writers a Voice and a Face — Anne Isabella, Lady Ritchie, née Thackeray (1837 – 1919) Part 2

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One of  the letters between Lady Ritchie and Robert Browning describes what promised to be an interesting lunch involving wild animals.

Letter from Anne Thackeray Ritchie to Robert Browning. 18 February [1885]

Anne Thackeray Ritchie makes this request to Robert Browning. “If you could come to lunch at 1:30 next Sunday we have a friendly lion tamer Capt. Speedy & some members of our family who would all—as you know—love (& honour too) to see you.”

Another envelope bearing Anne Thackeray Ritchie’s handwriting held an interesting drawing by Robert Browning.

A pencil sketch of Archbishop Stigant with crosier, signed “Roberti Browningii opus” is accompanied by an envelope annotated by Anne Thackeray Ritchie: “Bishop Stigand.” The image was drawn following a visit to see the Bayeux Tapestries with the Milsand family in September 1870 according to a letter from Laure Milsand to Anne Thackeray Ritchie, 14 March 1891.

Yet another inscription by Robert Browning thanks Miss Thackeray for a gift.

The Inn Album by Robert Browning (London, 1875)

Still another inscription by Robert Browning notes that this book of translations was given to him by Miss Thackeray and Hallam Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s son.

Richard Claverhouse Jebb, Translations into Greek and Latin Verse (Cambridge, 1873).

The half-title page of this book bears this inscription by Robert Browning:

(The joint gift of Annie Thackeray and Hallam Tennyson:

x)

x) καὶ μὴν Μάρων μοι πῶμ᾽ ἔδωκε, παῖς θεοῦ,
ὃν ἐξέθρεψα ταῖσδ᾽ ἐγώ ποτ᾽ ἀγκάλαις.

R B, Dec. 19. ’73: ὡς σαφέστερον μάθης.)

The lines are from Euripides, Cyclops, lines 141-42, p. 153 in Euripides Witzschel, Vol. 2 in Browning’s traveling Greek library. (Look for another blogpost soon about this unique collection item.) The lines refer to an exchange between Odysseus and Silenus. Oddysseus says: “What is more, Maron, the god’s own son, gave me the drink.” And Silenus replies: “The lad I once raised in these very arms?” It is followed by Robert’s comment in Greek: “to make my meaning clear, ” probably referring to the “x” he placed under Hallam Tennyson’s name and alluding to his close connection to Hallam. If Hallam is “the god’s own son,” does it also intimate that Tennyson is the god?

Melinda Creech

Giving Nineteenth Century Women Writers a Voice and a Face — Anne Isabella, Lady Ritchie, née Thackeray (1837 – 1919)

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My father [William Makepeace Thackeray, a nineteenth century English novelist] was always immensely interested by the stories of spiritualism and table-turning, though he certainly scarcely believed half of them. Mrs. Browning believed and Mr. Browning was always irritated beyond patience by the subject. I can remember her voice, a sort of faint minor chord, as she, lisping the “r” a little, uttered her remonstrating “Robert!” and his loud dominant baritone sweeping away every possible plea she and my father could make; and then came my father’s deliberate notes, which seemed to fall a little sadly — his voice always sounded a little sad — upon the rising waves of the discussion.

Anne Ritchie, “Robert & Elizabeth Browning” in Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning (London: Macmillan, 1892), pp. 191-2.

Dr. Elizabeth Jay, Emeritus Professor at Oxford Brookes University, who has written extensively on women writers and the interaction of religion and literature in the nineteenth century, suggested the above quotation which concerns the Brownings’ disagreements about spiritualism. She suggests it is typical of Anne Thackeray Ritchie’s ability to recall the small intimate details of her acquaintance with the Brownings and bring those experiences to life. Lady Ritchie shares her memories of three great writers of the Victorian period in this book.  The signature “E. FitzGerald, Oct. 1, 1892” appears on the front flyleaf of the Armstrong Browning Library’s copy of this book. Eliza Fitzgerald was a good friend of Robert Browning.

Anne Ritchie was the eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray, a well-known Victorian novelist. Ritchie was well acquainted with many in the literary community and was Virginia Woolf’s step-aunt. Ritchie notably wrote biographical pieces on her contemporaries, including Tennyson, the Brownings, and Julia Margaret Cameron. The photograph above was taken by Ms. Cameron. Ritchie was also popular for her modernization of fairy tales, setting them in the nineteenth century. She published the stories in several volumes, including Five Old Friends and Bluebeard’s Keys.

The Armstrong Browning Library owns twenty-six nineteenth-century editions of Anne Thackeray Ritchie’s works, including rare editions of The Story of Elizabeth: A Tale (1864), To Esther, and Other Sketches (1869), Bluebeard’s Keys, and Other Stories (1874), Toilers and Spinsters, and Other Essays (1874), Records of Tennyson, Ruskin and Browning (1892), and Alfred, Lord Tennyson and his friends; A series of 25 portraits … from the negatives of Mrs. Julia Margaret Cameron and H. H. H. Cameron (1893).

The ABL also owns 110 letters in which Anne Thackeray Ritchie was a correspondent. Many of these letters are part of the Joseph Milsand Archive and are previously unpublished. Her manuscript of “From the Roundabout Papers” is also at the library.

Melinda Creech

 

Giving Nineteenth Century Women Writers a Voice and a Face — (Julia) Augusta Webster [née Davies], [pseud. Cecil Home] (1837–1894)

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We ought to make out what we mean, and to teach definitely one system or the other; goodness for its own sake, or goodness for its extraneous rewards.

 Augusta Webster, “Virtue is its own Reward,”
The Examiner, 23 Feb 1878, p. 238.

Webster’s series of essays first appeared in the Examiner and were later published as a book,  A Housewife’s Opinions (1879). Dr. Patricia Rigg, author of Julia Augusta Webster: Victorian Aestheticism and the Woman Writer, and Professor, Department of English and Theatre, Acadia University, Canada, suggested the above quotation. In the essay, Webster takes a very practical approach to morality. She discusses the phrase “virtue is its own reward,” arguing that virtue, in fact, generally causes loss to the practitioner. She warns that systems of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation are mutually exclusive and that choosing one course or the other is a better plan for educating our children. A similar concern was more recently expressed by Alfie Kohn, the author of Punished by Rewards (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993 / 1999).

Augusta Webster was an accomplished scholar, learning Italian, Spanish, French, Greek, and Latin. She pursued her passion for painting but was expelled from the South Kensington Art School in London for whistling. She published translations of Aeschylus and Euripides. Her first book of poetry, Blanche Lisle: and other poems (1860), was published under a pseudonym, Cecil Home, but later publications were done under her own name. She gained her greatest popularity with her dramatic monologues, in part inspired by Robert Browning. These monologues gave a voice to women and reflected her feminist interests.

There has been a renewal of interest in Webster in the last few years focusing on her roles as writer, professional critic, activist, and political figure. Her sonnet sequence, Mothers and Daughter (London: Macmillan and Co., 1895), published posthumously, has also gained attention recently among scholars. In the sonnets, Webster presents an unreserved tribute to motherhood, rescuing the experience of birth and motherhood from their typical use in the nineteenth century as metaphors for male creativity. William Michael Rossetti, English writer and critic, wrote the introduction, in which he comments:

Nothing certainly could be more genuine than these Sonnets. A Mother is expressing her love for a Daughter – her reminiscences, anxieties, and hopeful anticipations. The theme is as beautiful and natural one as any poetess could select…. It seems a little surprising that Mrs. Webster had not been forestalled – and to the best of my knowledge she never was forestalled – in such a treatment. But some of the poetesses have not been Mothers.

London: Macmillan And Co. and New York, 1895.

The Armstrong Browning Library owns two volumes of Webster’s poetry, A Woman Sold and Other Poems (London: Macmillan and Co., 1867) and A Book of Rhyme (London : Macmillan, 1881).

An advertisement in the back of A Woman Sold and Other Poems for Dramatic Studies, another volume of poetry by Webster, includes this quote from Contemporary Review: “Mrs. Webster’s dramatic and poetic poems are of no common order. Her special line is the subjective analysis of thought and feeling.” Another note of interest is that the Hathi Trust online edition of the book was a “Gift of Prof. J. R. Lowell of Cambridge,” to Harvard  University.

At least one volume of Augusta Webster’s work was owned by Robert Browning. A Book of Rhyme (1881), in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand bears the following inscription: “To Robert Browning from the Author A.W. July 1881.” The ABL owns a copy of the same edition that Robert Browning owned.

Melinda Creech

Notes and Queries: Does anyone know where to find the photograph alluded to on the engraving of Augusta Webster: “Photographed by Ferrando, Roma”?

I have not found a copy of the original photo, however, I have found a variant image of her — also credited to Ferrando.
It is in: EMPORIUM: RIVISTA MENSILE ILLUSTRATA D’ARTE LETTERATURA SCIENZE E VARIETÀ. Vol. 1, No. 2, Feb. 1895
It is in the article: “Le odierne poetesse inglesi.” That is, “Today’s English poets.” Pages 104-113.
http://www.artivisive.sns.it/galleria/pagine.php?volume=I&pagina=I_002_104.jpg
The Webster image is on page 108.

Melvin