" A novel flashes up for a season and does not often outlast it. For ‘Mary Barton’ I am a little, little disappointed, do you know. I have just done reading it. There is power and truth — she can shake and she can pierce — but I wish half the book away, it is so tedious every now and then; and besides I want more beauty, more air from the universal world — these classbooks must always be defective as works of art. "
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning