AURORA LEIGH

Narrator Lucy Scott is quite good as Aurora Leigh, who tells her own story in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's novel in verse. Scott hints at the various voices and deftly expresses the Victorian (often exaggerated) passions of the characters. The poetry is clear without undue vocal emphasis. There's not much she can do, however, to speed up the story. To a contemporary listener, the extended images and descriptions of landscapes and emotions are not gripping but, rather, intrusions that have to be borne until the next bit of action. The novel was quite popular in its day, and John Ruskin considered it the greatest long poem of the 19th century, but history has not sustained that judgment. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2025]