Name: Rebecca

Reading: Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Why did you want to read this? When I first read Aurora Leigh, I felt like this nineteenth century gem had been hidden from me. Elizabeth Barrett Browning beats most of her contemporaries in the vitality of her language, and the poem carries me throughout with the force of its energy. I find the depiction of young Aurora Leigh's grief, and her turn back towards life, moving. It is a politically rich story, a novel in verse which sets Aurora's ambitions as a writer within the social struggles of her time and place. A tour de force, basically.

How did you record yourself? On Zoom audio in my bedroom, with a cup of tea.