As an English teacher, I'm ashamed to admit that I knew very little about either Elizabeth Barrett or Robert Browning before picking up this book. The story of their maid, Lily Wilson, gives an interesting perspective on the private life of Elizabeth and Robert. And I admired that Forster depicted the two famous literary figures as she saw to be accurate, rather than glamorizing and glorifying them as there might be a temptation to do. The two poets are very human, often fussy, melodramatic, and given to self-aggrandizement. That made me all the more interested in the story of Lily and the difference in their lifestyle and hers, and of course their indifference to the way they treated her. It's been a while since I read something like Jane Austen, so it was refreshing and fascinating to dip back into a world with social codes so different from ours today. This book must have taken years to research, and Forster's depiction of Victorian life shows the evidence of that research.

There was a page-long afterword that explained which parts of the book were true, but I wanted more. I wish Margaret Forster had written more books like this! You won't be sorry you picked it up.

I knew next to nothing about the subject matter of this book when my mother lent it to me (she loved it as well). Forster is able to completely personalize the social constrictions of Victorian society through the eyes of Wilson, Lady's Maid to the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Honestly enjoyable and a treat to read. I couldn't help noticing all the 5 star ratings here - well deserving of this fine author. Bravo!

I have to start out by saying that it has been 9 years since I read this book, but even now it stands out as one of the most telling books I have ever read about a genious writer named Elizabeth Barret Browning. In Lady's maid the story of Elizabeth Barret Browning is told from the eyes of her Maid servant. This unusual perspective gives the reader the ability to see the writer(Elizabeth Barret) from a third party focus instead of a introspective focus. The book is sooo good that you are instantly transfixed after the first page. If you are wise you will buy the book and read it when you can literaly sit down and read it cover to cover and enjoy it. It is that good! Enjoy and be edducated. Remember to have lots of tissue at the end, you will need it!

My ex girlfriend, Ashleigh, gave this to me years ago, before she was forced by her family to marry this guy. Long story but she sent this book to me and signed the inside.
Next to Shakespeare, this is the most bittersweet and poetic
poems of love that I have ever read.
It was said that a husband and wife team wrote these so one can only imagine how passionate their marriage was, huh?

This book of sonnets and poems is just wonderful. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's writing is able to get to the very heart of the reader with honesty and beauty. This collection really speaks to the romantic soul with passion and truth. I find her writings to be incredibly moving and this volume touched me deeply.

These sonnets ease my tension when I read them.

My ex girlfriend, Ashleigh, gave this to me years ago, before she was forced by her family to marry this guy named Tyler. Long story but she sent this book to me and signed the inside.

Next to Shakespeare, this is the most bittersweet and poetic
poems of love that I have ever read.

It was said that a husband and wife team wrote these so one can only imagine how passionate their marriage was, huh?

The book brings together the best of Elizabeth barret Browning. It is a wonderful, emotional book. I enjoy poetry, especially good kind. this is it.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry, especially the "Sonnets from the Portuguese," is beautiful, intelligent, and honest love poetry. Anyone who has experienced the doubts, fears, and transformation of love will recognize the truth of the poet's struggle to trust and to love.

Dominique Browning, editor of HOUSE & GARDEN magazine, has a triumph on her hands with "House & Garden Book of Style." HOUSE & GARDEN has long been the sophisticated cousin to the more accessible HOUSE BEAUTIFUL, and that chicness is in evidence here. The HOUSE & GARDEN cool austerity--sometimes sacrificing warmth for hard-edged style, but many times not--is amply displayed throughout.

The book covers a panoply of styles, from "Country Luxe" to "New International" to "Mid-Century Modern" and beyond. The shabby warmth of English-inspired rooms is covered, as is the prissier French look--but as HOUSE & GARDEN so often does, there is almost always a visual wrench thrown into the works to get your attention and make you rethink your assumptions about a particular genre. Perfectly making the point is the photograph on p. 25, which shows an 18th-century settee decorously covered in a taupe damask, above which hangs what appears to be a piece of Spirograph art made with screamingly bright primary oil paints. The effect is jarring--but it works.

The thinking which goes into the decoration of these rooms is explored just as deeply as the looks themselves. Although photographs take up most of the room--as they should, since this is a case when a picture telling a thousand words is not only desirable, but necessary for instructing the reader--the text is informative and enlightening. The end result is that these profoundly individual rooms make their own cases, and what beautiful cases they make.

"How Do I Love Thee?" was a romantic true love story. In the book, Robert Browning gave Elizabeth "Ba" Barret the courage to love and live life. Ba was an invalid who lived with a widowed, controlling father of seven children. Although, Ba was his pride and joy, he kept her captive through her illness. Ba's poetry caused Robert Browning to fall in love with her and wish to meet her. The two poets' friendship blossomed through their letters; after they met face to face it soon became love. Soon Ba's father was the only thing standing in the way of their true happiness.

The book begins with a curious statement which holds your attention through the first few chapters. "How Do I Love Thee?" becomes very interesting after Ba and Robert finally meet face to face. The author's incorporation of the love poems of Elizabeth Barret Browning and Robert Browning was terrific addition to the story. The end was disappointing, but the book as a whole was a fantastic true love story of two amazing poets.

I've read other poems but no such poem like one written by a browning.The world lost one great poet

The romantic story of 2 poets who fell in love at mid-life, married, escaped to Italy, and lived happily for 15 years until Elizabeth's death. The author discusses the lives of the poets amongst their friends, acquaintances, other writers, & artists in Italy where living was less expensive and the climate more favorable. There are many cute stories about their son Pen and how the couple disagreed over various aspects of his unbringing. Also touched upon are the previous generations of both the Barretts and the Brownings and their history in Jamaica. Besides learning about the the Brownings, this book gives you a good feel of what life was like in the middle 19th century. Lots of B&W illustrations throughout the book.

A wonderful biography of a marriage between two genius poets, Dared and Done drew me in with such force and speed that I was almost glad of being ill myself so as to have an excuse to stay in bed and finish it. Markus has managed to convey her own excitement at relating such an intriguing story and did what a good author should do - made me want to delve into these poets' lives and their poetry even more.

Some of the speculation I did not agree with such as EBB's father not wanting his children to marry because of possible African blood. The birth of Pen Browning should have eradicated that concern. We may never understand the strange, cruel elder Barrett and fortunately, Dared and Done doesn't hinge on the theory. I did want to know more about the conniving Sophia Eckley - her cause of death for example, since she played such a huge role in the Browning marriage. I was also curious about EBB's illness - oddly, we never do get a diagnosis - only her maintenance cure of morphine and ether.

Remarkably, EBB had the greater reputation as a poet during the Barrett-Browning marriage with Robert Browning for many years being considered the lesser poet. That can make for trouble in the most loving of marriages and re-witnessing the devotion these two gifted poets demonstrated repeatedly is both exceptional and inspiring.

The Brownings hold a special place in my world, especially EBB. "Sonnets From The Portuguese" speaks with the eloquence, dignity and passion of the human ideal behind the flaws and veils of life and lovers (both RB and EBB's poetry are available on disc). Especially the last ten sonnets. EBB wrote not only about love and lovers, but about the human condition. She lived an insulated life yet was by nature a worldly and sophisticated soul. RB struggled with his inability to support his family, living off of EBB's inheritance annuity. Through this biography I was better able to appreciate his humaness and struggle, though I am still inclined toward EBB and her poetry. They were the sum of many contradictions, the big one being that they were so English (formal and proper) yet Bohemian in their liberal thinking. Both lovers and artists in the same household, in the same relationship, in the same struggle to survive and create (they do remind me of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's struggle and life together). While the book probably told the whole story, at least as much as a biographer can research and reveal, I still felt something lacking. I wanted the story to go on a little longer, a little deeper. I knew quite a bit about EBB before I began the book, I learned much more about her heritage and conflicts by reading this biography. My appreciation is much greater. It's a shame that we Moderns let so much of our heritage lay dormat (literaturewise) in the vaults of the "old days". To sip and savour the lives and poetry of the past is something we should cherish and celebrate. This book points in that direction. I strongly recommend this to all lovers of RB & EBB and poetry.

This is a great, even epic poem, but it can not be considered the definitive ninteenth-century work by any means. It can not be considered in any way to measure against such other epic poems, such as the classics (Homer, Vergil, Langland, Chaucer, etc.), later epics along the lines of Pope's "The Rape of The Lock" or Goethe's "Faust," and, most especially, Milton's "Paradise Lost," the great English epic poem above all others (if somewhat more esoteric to nowaday's "well-read" intellectuals). The "Aurora Leigh" has also unfortunately suffered the stigma of being a work solely concerned with feminism and social commentary. But I digress. The "Aurora Leigh" is an amazing work to explore, a true landmark, despite its flaws (of which there are honestly a few), in both the English language and ninteenth century studies. The Norton Critical Edition is wonderful, complete with well-organized and relevent supplementary literature (such as interpretive notes, essays, etc.). A great work to explore, though remain aware that this is a single interpretation of the ninteenth century, and that E.B.B., for all her gifts, was not the "shining light" of the time (there are writers just as good from the period, such as her husband Robert Browning).

E.B.B. set out to outstrip Milton and does so in an amazingly original way. Aurora Leigh is a novel in blank verse that is actually longer than Paradise Lost! She combines the genre expectations for a woman writer--the novel--with an audacious bid for poetic immortality. The book tells a good story but it also works as a formidable reminder to her contemporary poets that the novel is taking over and poets must make sure that they are writing in the spirit of the age.

Don't spend the extra money for this translation. Buy the Dover Thrift edition. You get the same story for a buck or two, and this translation is nothing spectacular.

There was a point at which some critics contended that "Prometheus Bound" was not actually written by Aeschylus, arguing that someone else, perhaps his son Euphorion, who was also a dramatist, The argument hinged on the portrait of Zeus in the play, which is highly critical of the king of the Gods and at odds with the wise and just Zeus of the "Orestia." Since we have only a half-dozen complete plays of the ninety Aeschylus is believed to have written, it is difficult to make a judgment regarding his entire body of work. However, we do have fragments from the other plays in the trilogy, "Prometheus Unbound" and "Prometheus the Fire-Carrier," which suggest that what happens in this first play sets the stage for an evolving Zeus, who eventually finds his better nature when he achieves a reconciliation with the rebel Titan. Given the dramatic scope of the "Orestia," with its evolving notion of justice, it seems to me reasonable enough that Aeschylus was attempting something similar with this trilogy.

"Prometheus Bound" finds the titan, who defied Zeus and gave humanity the saving gift of fire (among other sins), bound on a remote mountain peak with iron spikes driven through his flesh by the unwilling Hephaestus and his assistants Might and Violence, allegorical figures who define the source of Zeus's power. The scenes of the play consist of a series of dialogues between Prometheus and the ancient god Oceanus (the chorus consists of the daughters of Oceanus), Io, a woman turned into a cow because of Zeus's attentions, and Hermes, who wants to know the secret held by Prometheus that threatens the power of Zeus. Prometheus (whose name means "foresight") refuses and is then cast into the underworld to be punished further. At the heart of the play is the conflict between the immovable will of Prometheus and the irresistible force of the power of Zeus.

Clearly this tragedy speaks to an archetypal human condition, wherein physical power seeks to break the mind of an individual to its will. The audience is caught in a dilemma, for on one side is the king of the gods and on the other is the savior of humanity, for without the gift of fire early man was doomed. Indeed, that was clearly the intent of Zeus. Consequently, like Prometheus, the audience is caught between their own rock and a hard place. Fortunately, by the end of the trilogy Aeschylus gives his audience an out, for the Zeus who is represented in this play is transformed into a more acceptable deity in the end. Even without those plays and knowing the innovative brilliance of Aeschylus as a tragic dramatist, we can certainly appreciate the overall story arc that begins with this play. For teachers who do not want to contend with the entire "Orestia" or have to contend with editing it down for students, "Prometheus Bound" represents a single work by Aeschylus that is equally as pivotal to our understanding of classical mythology.

Prometheus Bound is the tale of Prometheus, a titan, who is being punished by Zeus. It is an interesting story and well worth the read, although it is only the first of three plays. The other two are lost to us. The price alone makes this a great deal.