London: Smith & Elder, 1898. Second Kenyon Edition. Finely bound by Bickers in three-quarters morocco over mottled boards with the spine stamped in the Arts & Crafts style. Top edge gilt. Mottled endpapers. Collating complete, including the frontis and the facsimile manuscript of Sonnet XIX opposite page 315: xxi, [1], 667, [1]. Some rubbing and staining to boards; small cracks to joints near spine extremities. Later ownership signature in pencil to verso of front endpaper. Scattered foxing to closed fore-edge of textblock, but internally fresh. The second edition of the one-volume collection of E.B.B. poems produced by Frederic C. Kenyon.

Throughout her authorial career, Elizabeth Barrett Browning pushed against the boundaries dictating how women should engage in social justice causes or express individual desires. While she highlighted social inequity that resulted from English economic policy in pieces like The Cry of the Children, her poem The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point, she fundamentally altered discusses of women's sexuality with the release of Sonnets from the Portuguese. Here, her influential works are brought together in a beautiful Arts & Crafts binding. (Item #5149)