Not Death, But Love: The Strange, Supernatural Story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Deeply researched and strikingly illustrated in Victorian style, Not Death, But Love puts an eerie, romantic twist on the true story of the poet who wrote the iconic Sonnet 43, which famously begins "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."

An invalid since childhood, poet Elizabeth Barrett is famous throughout Victorian England, despite a hermit-like existence in the household of her tyrannical father. Opium makes the pain of her mysterious illness more bearable, but she lives in constant expectation of death. To her surprise, she instead finds love with dashing fellow poet Robert Browning, who whisks her away to freedom in Florence, Italy. Captivated by her new home and the revolutionary spirit of the Italian Risorgimento, Elizabeth basks in the glow of a happy marriage and reinvigorated health.

Haunted by lingering griefs, however, Elizabeth is drawn into a shadowy world of séances and mediums as the supernatural craze known as spiritualism spreads from America to Europe. On a visit to London, she witnesses the otherworldly feats of celebrated medium Daniel Dunglas Home, who claims to conjure the spirits of dearly departed relatives. While Robert takes an immediate disliking to Home, sparking a bitter rivalry, Elizabeth falls under the spell of enchanting Boston heiress Sophie Eckley. The two women embark on a series of spiritual experiments that threaten Elizabeth and Robert's status as soulmates.

Laced with hints of the supernatural, this graphic novel retells Barrett Browning's story while exploring the timeless tensions between passion and repression, faith and skepticism, hope and despair.

Lavender Vroman is a writer, editor, and former entertainment journalist, film critic, and pop culture blogger. Her obsession with Elizabeth Barrett Browning began in high school. While studying at the University of California, Santa Barbara, she researched the poet and began the screenplay that would become the basis for Not Death, But Love. Lavender lives in Southern California with her husband, Nick, and daughter, Eliza. She spends too much time thinking about Star Wars, movies, comic books, and romance novels.