'The Swan’s Nest' a National Poetry Month Adventure featuring National Book Award finalist Laura McNeal
“I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Are you a poetry fan, or simply a hopeless romantic? Then join us to discuss Laura McNeal’s latest novel, "The Swan’s Nest," and immerse yourself in the radical hopes of two people who believed love in practice could be as enduring and faithful as love in poetry.
On a bleak day in January 1845, a struggling, middle-class English poet named Robert Browning wrote a letter to a famous and wealthy invalid few had ever seen. “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,” he wrote, “and I love you too.” For the next five months, he and Elizabeth Barrett corresponded about each other’s writing as she privately composed the love poems that would become her most enduring work.
Just a year and a half later, she shocked her family and the literary world by running away with him. Their romantic life in Italy, and their devotion to each other, fused with their poems to make them celebrities in their time and turned every object they owned into a sacred relic. Laura McNeal uses their poems, possessions, and family papers to bring them and their world to life in her latest novel, "The Swan’s Nest."
Just in time to celebrate National Poetry Month, your Adventure includes author event, a warm cup of Meraki’s signature coffee/tea, afternoon light bite, poetry reading, book discussion, Q&A, book signing, and an intimate experience in celebration of the great love between Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning.
