SOURCE: “Tyrants and Bullies,” in New Statesman & Society, Vol. 1, No. 3, June 24, 1988, pp. 38–39.

In the following review, Angier describes Elizabeth Barrett Browning as a myth-dispelling biography, and speculates on Forster's attitude toward her subject.

This is the most exciting sort of biography to read, or to write: the myth-dispelling biography, which overturns an old story, and does so most convincingly.

There are two main mythological figures here [in Elizabeth Barrett Browning]: Edward Moulton-Barrett, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's father, and Elizabeth herself. Their roles are simple, as mythical roles must be: oppressor and oppressed, tyrant and victim. Margaret Forster sets out to show that the truth is more complicated than this mythical fiction.

First she suggests that Edward Barrett was not the monster and despot he has been made out to be. She sketches his youthful exuberance (in building the Barretts' eccentric minareted home, Hope End), his tenderness and approachability as...