• Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Beverly Taylor (bio)

In an anomalous year, I begin reviewing the scholarship of August 2019–August 2020 with an anomaly, for this first work will soon be published in 2020. Philip Kelley, the principal editor of The Brownings’ Correspondence, with infinite generosity sent me the final proof for volume 27 (Winfield, KS: Wedgestone Press, [End Page 321] forthcoming, 2020), the most recent volume of some forty projected for the full edition. Like the dozen most immediately preceding volumes, volume 27 is edited by Kelley, Edward Hagan, and Linda M. Lewis. It includes 163 letters dating from October 1859 through May 1860, a period when events of the Second Italian War of Independence consumed the Brownings. Because any new volume of the Correspondence constitutes the highwater mark in a year’s publications on EBB, I offer the following forecast of this volume’s contents to reassure Browning scholars that a little wait will be handsomely repaid.

Knowing as we do that EBB dies just over a year after writing the last letters gathered here, volume 27 begins ominously by referring repeatedly to EBB’s serious bout of illness in the summer of 1859. She acknowledges to friends that she had purposefully deceived her sisters by concealing the extent of her illness; she nearly died, and she confesses that she had felt as if she had an “iron bar crushing the chest & forbidding the breath” (p. 16). Her letters written in the spring of 1860 register her growing strength by becoming more numerous and longer. Early letters in this volume track the Brownings’ eagerness for good weather to allow them to travel to Rome for a warmer winter, and they recount Robert’ s efforts, assisted by their friends the Storys—already in Rome—to find affordable accommodations where few steps and ample sunlight and warmth would support EBB’s continued convalescence. Both of the Brownings marvel at the emptiness of Rome, which émigrés and tourists now avoid because of the general state of unrest generated by combat in Italy. When the medical imperative driving her quest for a warmer climate prevails, EBB insists to her worried sisters in England that Rome is perfectly safe from military violence. She jokingly reports Pen’s summation that the family had to choose between “cold air in her chest” and “a cannonball in her stomach” (p. 52). The lungs prevailed. But she insists she feels perfectly safe in Italy (“I am afraid of nothing in Italy but the north wind,” p. 56), and by March 1860 she drolly reports that she is “beginning to flourish..., as far as so dry a stick can” (p. 224).

This “dry stick” can still register fiery passion about English readers’ neglect of Robert’s poetry: “The blindness deafness & stupidity of the English public to Robert are amazing” (p. 268). In contrast, she declares, “in America, he’s a power, a writer, a poet—he is read—he lives in the hearts of the people.” Something of a social lion in England, he is a literary lion in America, where people host “‘Browning evenings’” and “‘Browning readings’” (p. 269). To measure the general English apathy toward literary accomplishment, she observes that though “English people will come & stare at me sometimes,” they fail to appreciate Robert, and the dentists, physicians, artists, and friends who treat her with free services and courtesies are generally not English (p. 269). [End Page 322]

EBB obliquely refers numerous times to her disdain for Sophia Eckley. To her confidante Isa Blagden she ironically observes that because she has a history of attracting “women of straw, women of false lives & hearts,” she intends “to have no more female friends” (pp. 124–125). On the topic of women’s conventional nature, she opines that women rarely care about political issues, “exterior subjects” (p. 113). Underscoring women’s conventional detachment from serious issues (as well as the pope’s failure to institute serious reforms), she jests about the pope’s issuing an edict forbidding the wearing of crinolines in St. Peter’s and other Catholic churches (p. 53). On friendships, she writes sadly of Anna Jameson’s death, and she refers frequently to arrangements that Robert...

• 伊丽莎白·巴雷特·布朗宁
• 贝弗利·泰勒（生物）

在异常的一年里，我开始以异常的方式审阅2019年8月至2020年8月的奖学金，因为第一篇论文很快就会在2020年出版。布朗宁书信社的主编Philip Kelley无限慷慨地寄给了我最后第27卷的证据（堪萨斯州温菲尔德，韦奇斯通出版社，[结束第321页]，2020年出版），完整版的最新四十卷预计得到证明。像前十本中最紧的一本书一样，第27卷由凯利（Kelley），爱德华·哈根（Edward Hagan）和琳达·刘易斯（Linda M. Lewis）编辑。它包括1859年10月至1860年5月的163封信，当时第二次意大利独立战争的事件吞噬了勃朗宁一家。因为任何新卷的函授构成了EBB一年出版物的最高水准，我对本书的内容提供了以下预测，以使Browning学者确信，稍等一会儿将得到丰厚的回报。

众所周知，在写完最后一封信后，EBB逝世了一年，第27卷开始不祥地提及1859年夏天EBB的严重疾病。她向朋友们承认，她故意欺骗了她的姐妹，隐藏她的病情；她差点死了，她承认自己感觉好像有一根“铁棍压伤了胸部，禁止呼吸”（第16页）。她于1860年春季写的信越来越多，越来越长，这标志着她的成长力量。本册中的前几封信反映了勃朗宁一家渴望好天气的渴望，以使他们能够前往罗马度过一个温暖的冬天，并讲述罗伯特的努力，在他们的朋友的帮助下，Stories（已经在罗马）找到了负担得起的住宿，只需几步之遥，充足的阳光和温暖便可以支撑EBB的持续康复。勃朗宁一家人都对罗马的空虚感到惊讶，由于意大利的战斗造成了普遍的动荡，现在移民和游客都回避了罗马的空虚。当驱使她寻求温暖气候的医疗迫切需求盛行时，EBB向她在英格兰的担心姐妹们坚称，罗马完全可以免受军事暴力侵害。她开玩笑地报告了彭的总结，认为一家人必须在“胸口冷空气”和“肚子里的炮弹”之间做出选择（第52页）。肺占了上风。但是她坚持认为自己在意大利感到非常安全（“在意大利，除了北风，我什么都不怕，”第56页），

这种“干棒”仍然可以引起英国读者忽视罗伯特诗歌的强烈热情：“英国公众对罗伯特的盲目性聋和愚蠢是惊人的”（第268页）。相反，她宣称：“在美国，他是大国，作家，诗人-他被读书-他生活在人民的心中。” 他是英格兰的社会狮子，在美国是一头文学狮子，人们在那里举办“'Browning nights'”和“'Browning readings'”（第269页）。为了衡量英语对文学素养的普遍冷漠，她观察到尽管“英国人有时会来盯着我看”，但他们却不欣赏罗伯特，以及免费提供服务和礼貌对待罗伯特的牙医，医师，艺术家和朋友通常不是英语（第269页）。[第322页]

EBB倾斜地多次提到她对Sophia Eckley的不屑。她对红颜知己艾莎·布拉登（Isa Blagden）颇具讽刺意味的是，由于她有一个吸引“稻草妇女，虚假生命和内心的女人”的历史，她打算“不再有女性朋友”（第124-125页）。关于妇女的传统性质，她认为妇女很少关心政治问题，即“外部对象”（第113页）。她着重强调妇女在严重问题上的常规疏离（以及教皇未能进行认真的改革），她对教皇颁布法令禁止在圣彼得大教堂和其他天主教教堂穿衬裙的行为感到开玩笑（第53页）。在友谊方面，她为安娜·詹姆森（Anne Jameson）的逝世而悲哀地写着，她经常提到罗伯特...