And then there it was, suddenly entire; she held it in her hands, beautiful and reasonable, clear and complete, the essence sucked out of life and held rounded here-- the sonnet.
--Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1)
ALTHOUGH ELIZABETH BARRETT BEGAN PUBLISHING POETRY AS EARLY AS 1820 she did not print her first three sonnets until 1838. Her 1844 collection, on the other hand, included 28 sonnets, and in 1850 she printed 50 sonnets. As I will demonstrate, this progressive ...