Reviewer’s Comments on The Brownings’ Correspondence

“When complete it will be one of the greatest editions of Victorian correspondence ever produced. The standard of editing is extraordinarily high.”

— London Review of Books

“The edition is brilliantly conceived and—so far—executed.”

— The New York Times Sunday Book Review

“This edition must play a central role in any future biography or critical study of the poets.”

— Journal of English and Germanic Philology

“What delights the reader most is the accuracy, the thoroughness and the completeness of the picture. … As a package this book is irresistible. As a work of scholarship it is outstanding.”

— The Sunday Times

“The letter texts are embedded in a mine of appendices, chronologies, contemporary reviews of the Brownings’ works, autobiographical fragments, lists of absent letters and of correspondents, biographical sketches, illustrations, end-notes identifying every person, public event, work of art or literature, mentioned in the letters. No smallest pebble is left unturned by the editors.”

— Times Literary Supplement

“This is biographical and historical scholarship on the twin Victorian scale, monumental and minute, scrupulous and grandiose, with a period taste for the grand design and the gratuitous elaboration of detail. The craftsmanship is of an appropriately high standard and reaches to the remotest corner of the edition’s rich and welcome superfluity.”

— Victorian Studies

“The editors’ objective is to publish ‘in full and in chronological order all available letters to or from Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’. Their editorial principles are clearly explained and soundly based; the letters are spaciously printed; each letter is provided with adequate biographical information and elucidatory notes; correspondents are economically identified and described; there is a most valuable checklist of supporting documents which presents, often with extensive quotation, a vast array of Browning materials of the period, including the contemporary reviews; and the illustrations are numerous and very well reproduced, the intention being to include eventually all known depictions of both poets. … This superb edition is the first choice for all the letters that it prints.”

— An Annotated Critical Bibliography of Robert Browning

“The central correspondents are compelling figures, fascinating people, lively, interesting, able to hold our attention through the written word … concerned with ideas and problems similar to ours, but it is their unique gift of expression and the depth of their understanding of events, ideas, and people that draw us to them and their letters.”

— Carlyle Annual

“Supplying lively footnotes and never obtrusive, the Wedgestone Press editors continue their delicate task with impeccable scholarship.”

— The Spectator

“These sturdy volumes are attractively printed and carefully proofread (a rarity nowadays) … . An appropriate purchase for libraries serving undergraduates, community college and graduate students, and general readers.”

— Choice