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Article: "Confirm my voice": "My sisters," poetic audiences, and the published voices of EBB.(Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
- Article from:
- Victorian Poetry
- Article date:
- December 22, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 West Virginia University Press, University of West Virginia. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In a pocket notebook including works dating from the 1842-44 period, the poet who used the name Elizabeth Barrett Barrett before her marriage and Elizabeth Barrett Browning afterwards, or "EBB" for short throughout her life, (1) drafted an untitled, unfinished poem beginning "My sisters! Daughters of this Fatherland / Which we call England!" (2) In this fragment, published here for the first time (see below), she calls upon the women of England: "Give me your ear & heart-Grant me yr voice / Do confirm my voice--lest it speak in vain." Fifty years after her birth in 1806, there seemed little reason to believe that Elizabeth Barrett Browning had spoken "in vain." By 1856, ...