Elizabeth Barrett Browning believed that "Christ's religion is essentially poetry - poetry glorified." In Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Spiritual Progress, Linda M. Lewis studies Browning's religion as poetry, her poetry as religion.

The book interprets Browning's literary life as an arduous spiritual quest - the successive stages being a rejection of Promethean pride for Christ-like humility, affirmation of the Gospels of Suffering and of Work, internalization of the doctrine of Apocalypse, and ascent to Divine Love and Truth.

Concluding with an examination of religion as a central focus of Victorian women poets, Lewis clarifies the ways in which Browning differs from Christina Rossetti, Felicia Hemans, Dora Greenwell, Jean Ingelow, and Mary Howitt. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Spiritual Progress maintains that Browning's peculiar face-to-face struggle with the patristic and poetic tradition - as well as with God - sets her work apart.