Sonnets from the Portuguese (The Heritage Press)

New York: The Heritage Press, 1948. Reissue. Large Hardcover. Good/Good. 0x0x0. Angelo, Valenti. Includes slipcase and publisher's Sandglass Number IX:16. Very good in good slipcase. Bottom slipcase seam beginning to split, slipcase corners rubbed, a few small spots on slipcase, spine toned. 1948 Large Hardcover. xiv, 110, [4] pp. 8vo. Illustrated by Fred A. Mayer. "Browning's most famous poetry collection. Barrett Browning was initially hesitant to publish the poems, believing they were too personal. However, her husband Robert Browning insisted they were the best sequence of English-language sonnets since Shakespeare's time and urged her to publish them. To offer the couple some privacy, she decided to publish them as if they were translations of foreign sonnets. She initially planned to title the collection 'Sonnets translated from the Bosnian', but Browning proposed that she claim their source was Portuguese, probably because of her admiration for Camoes and Robert's nickname for her: 'my little Portuguese'. The title is also a reference to Les Lettres Portugaises (1669).