Page:The complete works of Mrs. E. B. Browning (Volume 1).djvu/17



preparing this first fully annotated edition of the complete works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, upon the same general plan as their edition of Robert Browning, the editors have found a virtually unbroken field, so far as notes or explanatory comment upon the allusions employed in the poems are concerned. These allusions are drawn from a wide range of book-culture and a lively acquaintance with the political history of Italy, France, and England. This mass of underlying knowledge is touched upon lightly but constantly by the poet and woven into her work, now by one strand, now by another, as suits her poetic purpose. The result is that her allusions are often blind, but distinctive and interesting, and it is hoped that the elucidation of them here given will be found useful.

The text is based, primarily, upon the author's latest revision appearing in the six-volume edition published after her death under the authority of Robert Browning. For the Juvenilia and scattered poems not included in that edition, the text is based upon the collection and chronological arrangement of Mr. F. G. Kenyon.

To the translations and prose essays collected in the last volume are added, for the first time in any edition, Mr. Horne's account of "Psyche Apocalypté," a drama projected by the poet, the translations from