Life Writing in the Victorian Age: Aurora Leigh (1856) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Life writing in the Victorian Age took the form of Biography, Autobiography and memoirs which was written in different genres of literature. It also took the form of letters, journals, and diaries. Some of the great Victorian writers wrote about themselves using an indirect method so that they can present an aspect of their lives and that of their contemporaries to their readers. An example of this is Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield. Life writing provides critical information about the Age. Most of the writers engage in this form of literary enterprise because they feel a sense of duty or in order to give themselves satisfaction that a record of their lived lives is available to future generations. Aurora Leigh is a novel in verse form and regarded as an example of Victorian life writing in verse. The heroine, Aurora, in the epic poem exemplifies some selective aspects of the life of Elizabeth Barret Browning and indeed, the situation of women in Victorian England. The ‘Woman Question’ is a core concern of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in this epic. The view and the place of a woman in the Victorian Age became an urgent concern for Browning.