"Sampson is adept at switching between personal history and literary analysis.… [She] does [Barrett Browning’s] achievement justice in this acute and well grounded psychological portrait."
Minneapolis Star Tribune - Mary Ann Gwinn
"There is more to this biography than simply access to new material.… Two-Way Mirror pushes back on the neglect, bordering on amnesia, that has descended on a poet once widely celebrated and still capable today of chilling readers with a sudden plunge from the shared everyday into frightening depths of feeling.… [Fiona] Sampson sympathizes with what it cost [Elizabeth] Barret Browning to become a poet. More than that, she hopes to inspire a new generation of readers, so that the price will have been worth it, after all."
"Sampson sensitively elucidates how Barrett Browning’s unusual life shaped her imagination and social consciousness.… [A] gleaming two-way mirror reflecting Barrett Browning and her profound and extraordinary oeuvre."
"Sampson uses both ‘Aurora Leigh’ and a complex, contemporary lens to understand how Barrett Browning defined herself, and why her struggles speak to our own. The result is a powerful restoration of the poet’s reputation and legacy."
Christian Science Monitor - Elizabeth Lund
"Astute, thoughtful and wide-ranging."
"This superb biography rescues Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s work from the dustbin of Victorian sentimentality to which her poems have been wrongly consigned for the better part of a century. Peeling back layers of myth, misogyny, and critical dismissal, Fiona Sampson allows us to see anew an extraordinary woman whose crowning book-length poem, Aurora Leigh , traces, for the first time in our language, the way a woman became a writer. Sampson’s engaging, deeply intelligent book, which at last gives Barrett Browning her due, is a profound inquiry, a vindication, and a delight."
"The central aim of Fiona Sampson’s new biography is to strip away the illusions we have about this unfashionable poet and get far closer to seeing her as she was. It is a bold attempt to understand Elizabeth Barrett Browning before her reputation started to ebb.… [A] fine contribution."
"[Two-Way Mirror ] restores [Barrett Browning] to her proper place as one of the leading voices of the Victorian era.… This book is an empathetic—and much-needed—reassessment which tells a fascinating story."
"It is [a] publicly engaged Elizabeth that Fiona Sampson sets before us in this fine biography."
"Sampson’s central argument is that the real drama and interest of EBB’s life are to be found in her work.… Sampson has written an often absorbing study of EBB’s risk-taking and originality as a poet."
Literary Review - Claudia Fitzherbert
"[A] brilliant, heart-stopping biography [that] reads like a thriller, a memoir and a provocative piece of literary fiction all at the same time.… [Sampson’s] authorial asides are always helpful, often provocative and sometimes outright funny. Most importantly, they help Barrett Browning seem more alive, as the two poets’ voices often intertwine on the page.… [Two-Way Mirror is] a vividly drawn exchange between a living poet and a dead one.… Throughout this magical and compelling book, Sampson shows us that we, too, can speak to the dead, or, at the very least, we can listen to their words."
"Fiona Sampson’s vivid new biography gives us Elizabeth Barrett Browning as busy and ambitious rather than a swooning sleeping beauty.… [B]eautifully told. It is high time that Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Aurora Leigh were once again household names."
Daily Mail - Frances Wilson
"Fiona Sampson spins an intriguingly complex account of her subject.… [A] refreshing, contemporary take on a poet who, no matter her bodily constraints, ranged freely over subject area, form and feeling."
Wall Street Journal - Abigail Deutsch
04/26/2021
Poet Sampson (In Search of Mary Shelley ) takes an unconventional and intriguing look at the life of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861). The volume is structured in nine “books” to mimic Elizabeth’s masterwork Aurora Leigh , and takes as its central conceit a focus on mirrors and framing. “Elizabeth dramatizes the two-way creation of every writing self, from without and from within,” Sampson writes, and aims to shatter the clichés that “frame” Barrett Browning’s life. Far from being the feeble, dominated invalid she’s often portrayed as, Barrett Browning was a well-regarded poet and financially independent. Sampson makes the case for Barrett Browning being “radical and exciting,” as she set the stage for such poets as Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath, and as “someone who becomes herself through becoming a poet.” Barrett Browning’s family history—they made their fortune in the sugar trade, profiting from slavery—is examined, as well, and puts her involvement in the abolitionist movement in context. This account shines when breaking the mythologies that surround Barrett Browning’s reputation, but the frequent reflections on framing and mirrors distracts rather than enhances. Still, fans of Barrett Browning will appreciate this refreshing portrait of the poet as an empowered woman. (Aug.)
"Sampson’s passionate and exacting biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a surprisingly compact volume, a bristling lyric sandwich of philosophy and action. It is also a page-turner."
★ 07/01/2021
Here is Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61) as we rarely see her, a tomboy and autodidact who became an international literary sensation. Sampson's highly accessible biography counters decades of criticism that satirized Barrett Browning as a caricature of a female poet—portrayals that have obscured her pioneering work, which opened lyric poetry to a distinctly feminine voice. Offering contemporary and historical context, Sampson (In Search of Mary Shelley ) introduces Barrett Browning as a woman of—and ahead of—her time and tracks her literary progression alongside her changing political views during an era of slavery and abolition. The research for this biography draws on Barrett Browning's extensive personal correspondence and family transactions in England and across the Atlantic. Sampson's work is marked by her careful attention to language and a desire to allow her subjects the opportunity to name themselves. Outlining a liminal space informed by gender, class, and disability, Sampson renders a modern portrait of Barrett Browning as a feminist who was presciently aware of the importance of her own image. The book draws on a range of primary sources and includes photographs of the poet and her family. VERDICT A welcome update that avoids sensationalism to pursue a more complex history of a much-loved literary figure. Recommended for all collections.—Asa Drake, Marion Cty. P.L., FL
2021-06-05
Sampson reintroduces Browning to a 21st-century audience, puts the more notorious aspects of the poet’s life in perspective, and makes the case that Browning was one of the great poets of her age. As the daughter of an eccentric English landowner, Elizabeth showed literary genius early, and her chronic illnesses freed her from the obligations of a woman of her class. Soon she was writing essays and poetry; as a young woman, she was published in England’s foremost journals thanks to her talent and support by mentors, both women and men. In her late 30s, she was contacted by poet Robert Browning, an admirer of her work. They corresponded, met, and eventually ran away to Italy to get married, a decision that enraged her controlling father, who cut her off financially (fortunately, she had her own inheritance). This well-publicized series of events, as well as Elizabeth’s eloquent love poetry, made them one of the premier couples of the 19th-century literary world, and they settled in Italy and had a son. In Italy, she wrote her nine-book masterwork, the epic poem/verse novel Aurora Leigh . Sampson provides updated research and commentary on how the Barrett family wealth was generated largely by slaves on family-owned plantations in Jamaica and how Elizabeth’s guilt at her heritage turned her toward political radicalism. The author is adept at switching between personal history and literary analysis. The latter part of the book—chronicling Elizabeth’s suffering from a series of miscarriages, pursuit of spiritualism, and increasing dependence on opium to alleviate pain—is melancholy, and Sampson chronicles the family’s wide-ranging travels in search of a climate more conducive to her health. Hers was a “life of struggle” with a bodily “machine” that often let her down, but her limitations enabled her genius. Sampson does her achievement justice.
An acute and insightful study of the life and work of a pathbreaking 19th-century poet.
