by Fiona Sampson Review by Brian Morton Virginia Woolf said: “Fate has not been kind to Mrs Browning as a writer. Nobody reads her, nobody discusses her, nobody troubles to put her in her place.” One might argue that Mrs Woolf wasn’t very kind to her, either; when she turned her mind to Elizabeth Barrett Browning it was to write a biography of her dog Flush, and one wonders what, exactly, she means by “her place”. But the better part of a century later, her basic point is beyond argument. No-one reads EBB now; no-one reads poetry, whose public gamut starts with Armitage and ends with Zephaniah. Perhaps now and again, some young swain hoicks “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” out of an online dictionary of quotations for Valentine’s Day, but that’s it.