LITERATURE 12 “How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways” Important and preferred second edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Poems, containing the first appearance of her famous love poems to her husband, Sonnets from the Portuguese, which did not appear in the 1844 first edition of Poems. This enlarged edition of Browning’s Poems is rightly considered an entirely separate work from the 1844 first edition. It includes, in addition to the Sonnets from the Portuguese, a number of poems printed or collected for the first time. “The strange courtship of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, morally chained to a monstrous father, and their subsequent elopement, is one of the most romantic stories in 19th-century literature. What Browning did not know is that while Elizabeth was lying on that famous sofa in her father’s house on Wimpole Street she was pouring out her heart in some of the most remarkable love poetry ever written” (Great Books and Book Collectors, 239). Second state, as usual, with publisher’s address of “193, Piccadilly” on title pages (only four copies are known in the first state). Interiors generally fine, expert restoration to inner hinges and cloth. A very attractive copy, scarce in original cloth. 11BROWNING, Elizabeth Barrett. Poems. New Edition. London, 1850. Two volumes. Small octavo, original blue cloth, custom chemise and clamshell box. $16,500
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