Mrs Browning's death is rather a relief to me, I must say: no more Aurora Leighs, thank God! A woman of real genius, I know; but what is the upshot of it all? She and her sex had better mind the kitchen and their children; and perhaps the poor: except in such things as little novels, they only devote themselves to what men do much better, leaving that which men do worse or not at all.
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Edward FitzGerald, Letter to W. H. Thompson (15 July 1861), in A. M. and A. B. Terhune (eds.) Letters of Edward Fitzgerald, vol. 2 (1980), p. 407. Cf. Robert Browning's retort, in W. R. Nicoll and T. J. Wise (eds.) Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century (1895), p. 544