Two-Way Mirror (book)

According to Kathryn Hughes in her Guardian review, Two-Way Mirror explores Barrett Browning's "personal and political entanglements with empire and race".[2] Incorporating recent archival discoveries, it portrays the poet as a daring Victorian sensation and dismisses her delicately "invalid" image.[3][4][5][6] New Statesman described the biography as an insightful account that disregards the previous studies that overshadowed the poet in relation to her father or husband.[7]

19th-century English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Sampson's analysis uses the poet's 1856 epic poem Aurora Leigh as a reference to argue about her reputation in the literary canon.[1][2][6][8] According to Hughes, Barrett Browning is represented as "publicly engaged" in the biography, in which Aurora Leigh provides the readers with "a map and model for how Barrett Browning forged a new relationship between female subjectivity and public utterance."[2]

The book received positive reviews from critics. English journalist Lucasta Miller gave the book four out of five stars in her review for The Daily Telegraph, saying that it "restores [Barrett Browning] to her proper place as one of the leading voices of the Victorian era". Miller further wrote that the book is "an empathetic- and much-needed reassessment which tells a fascinating story". She praised the use of present tense signalling "the sense that the biographer is her subject back to life".[5] While referring to Two-Way Mirror as a "page-turner", The Irish Times's critic Martina Evans described the biography as "passionate and exacting" and wrote that it is a "surprisingly compact volume, a bristling lyrical sandwich of philosophy and action".[8]

In his review for The Spectator, Robert Douglas Fairhurst lauded Sampson for "breath[ing] vigour into a poet generally represented as a delicate invalid without any inner life at all".[4] Similarly, Brian Morton of The Herald raved about Sampson's portrayal of Barrett Browning's life as a "complex portrait, with its multiple frames and mirror effects".[6] Writing for The Times, Daisy Goodwin commended the biography as "intriguing" and "timely" which makes "the convincing claim that [Barrett Browning] was the first female lyric poet" and shows the poet "put[ting] the work before the life, and that surely is the right way around."[1] Literary Review's Claudia Fitzherbert praised Sampson for crafting an "absorbing study of [Barrett Browning]'s risk-taking and originality as a poet, covering ground missing from Margaret Forster's biography published in 1988."[9]