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Elizabeth Barrett Browning

, Poet
Elizabeth Barret Browning
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  • Born: 6 March 1806
  • Birthplace: Durham, England
  • Died: 29 June 1861
  • Best Known As: Author of Aurora Leigh and wife of Robert Browning

Name at birth: Elizabeth Barrett

After anonymously publishing a book of poetry and a translation of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, Elizabeth Barrett published The Seraphim and Other Poems in 1838 under her own name. Her literary success drew the attention of poet Robert Browning and they met and fell in love. In defiance of her father, and in spite of ill-health, she married Browning secretly in 1846. She continued to publish poems, including the "novel in verse" Aurora Leigh, published in 1857.

 
 
Biography: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The works of the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) enjoyed great popularity during her lifetime. Her most enduring poetry has proved to be "Sonnets from the Portuguese".

Elizabeth Barrett was born on March 6, 1806, near Durham. She was the eldest of the 12 children of Edward Moulton Barrett, a possessive and autocratic man loved by his children even though he rigidly controlled their lives. Though she never received any formal education, Elizabeth was a precocious reader, and she began writing poetry at an early age. In 1819 her father had printed 50 copies of her epic "The Battle of Marathon," which she later referred to as "Pope's Homer done over again, or rather undone." In 1826 she published anonymously An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems, an attempt, as she later noted, to survey history, science, metaphysics, and poetry from classical Greece to the Victorian day in 88 pages.

Elizabeth's youthful happiness was not to last. In 1821 she began to suffer from a nervous disorder which was to cause headaches, weakness, and fainting spells for the rest of her life. Barrett continued her poetic career in 1833 with the anonymous publication of Prometheus Bound: Translated from the Greek of Aeschylus, and Miscellaneous Poems. Two years later, the Barretts moved to London and in 1838 settled permanently at 50 Wimpole Street. In the same year Elizabeth published her first book under her own name, The Seraphim and Other Poems. Though these poems are often filled with heavy-handed pathos and moralizing, the critics hailed her as a new poet of "extraordinary ability."

In 1838 Barrett became seriously ill. Two years later her favorite brother, Edward, drowned, and this shock seriously aggravated her poor health. For the next 5 years she remained in her room and saw no one except her family and a few close friends. In 1844, however, the publication of Poems secured her fame. Such poems as "The Dead Pan" and "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" seem strident and sentimental to modern readers, but they were very popular with Victorian readers and won high praise from critics in England and the United States.

But the most significant result of Poems was the beginning of Barrett's relationship with the poet Robert Browning. Attracted by her praise of his poetry, Browning wrote to her on Jan. 10, 1845, and thus began England's most famous literary love affair. Barrett's illness had led her to feel "completely dead to hope of any kind." Her progress out of this despair to hope and finally joy can be traced in her letters to Browning and in her Sonnets from the Portuguese, written during their courtship and expressing her love for him. Because Elizabeth's father had forbidden any of his children to marry, the couple were secretly married on Sept. 12, 1846. In anger and frustration, Mr. Barrett refused ever to see his daughter again.

The Brownings journeyed south through France to Italy. Casa Guidi in Florence was their home for the rest of Mrs. Browning's life. There her health was so improved that on March 9, 1849, she gave birth to a son, Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning. In 1850 Browning issued a revised edition of Poems containing the Sonnets from the Portuguese, which her husband had urged her to publish. Modern readers usually find these sonnets her best work. But Victorian readers much preferred her Aurora Leigh, a long poem in blank verse published in 1856.

The major interest of Browning's later years was the Italian struggle for unity and independence. Both Casa Guidi Windows (1851) and Poems before Congress (1860) attempted to win sympathy for the Italian cause. On June 29, 1861, she died quietly in her husband's arms, with a "smile on her face."

Further Reading

The best biography of Mrs. Browning is Gardner B. Taplin, The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1957). Also useful is Dorothy Hewlett, Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A Life (1952). A detailed and moving account of the courtship of the Brownings can be obtained from The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, 1845-1846, first edited by their son (2 vols., 1899) and recently re-edited by Elvan Kintner (2 vols., 1969). More of Browning's extensive correspondence is collected in Sir Frederick G. Kenyon's edition of The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (2 vols., 1897).

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, detail of an oil painting by Michele Gordigiani, 1858; in the National …
(click to enlarge)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, detail of an oil painting by Michele Gordigiani, 1858; in the National … (credit: Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)
(born March 6, 1806, near Durham, Durham, Eng. — died June 29, 1861, Florence) British poet. Though she was an invalid who was afraid to meet strangers, her poetry became well known in literary circles with the publication of volumes of verse in 1838 and 1844. She met Robert Browning in 1845 and, after a courtship kept secret from her despotic father, they married and settled in Florence. Her reputation rests chiefly on the love poems written during their courtship, Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850). Her most ambitious work, the blank-verse novel Aurora Leigh (1857), was a huge popular success.

For more information on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, visit Britannica.com.

 
Spotlight: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

From our Archives: Today's Highlights, March 6, 2006

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born 200 years ago today. Infamous for her love affair and secret marriage to poet Robert Browning, Elizabeth wrote "Sonnets from the Portuguese" in 1850, basing it on their own love story. The Brownings settled in Florence, Italy, where Elizabeth – who had been in poor health for years – became stronger and thrived. She wrote "Casa Guidi Windows" in 1851 and "Aurora Leigh," one of her most famous poems, appeared in 1856.
 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Browning, Elizabeth Barrett,
1806–61, English poet, b. Durham. A delicate and precocious child, she spent a great part of her early life in a state of semi-invalidism. She read voraciously—philosophy, history, literature—and she wrote verse. In 1838 the Barrett family moved to 50 Wimpole St., London. Six years later Elizabeth published Poems, which brought her immediate fame. The volume was a favorite of the poet Robert Browning, and he began to correspond with her. The two fell in love, but their courtship was secret because of the opposition of Elizabeth's tyrannical father. They married in 1846 and traveled to Italy, where most of their married life was spent and where their one son was born. Mrs. Browning threw herself into the cause of Italian liberation from Austria. “Casa Guidi,” their home in Florence, is preserved as a memorial. Happy in her marriage, Mrs. Browning recovered her health in Italy, and her work as a poet gained in strength and significance. Her greatest poetry, Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850), was inspired by her own love story. Casa Guidi Windows (1851), on Italian liberty, and Aurora Leigh (1857), a novel in verse, followed. During her lifetime Mrs. Browning was considered a better poet than her husband. Today her life and personality excite more interest than her work. Although as a poet she has been criticized for diffuseness, pedantry, and sentimentality, she reveals in such poems as “The Cry of the Children” and some of the Sonnets from the Portuguese a highly individual gift for lyric poetry.

Bibliography

See The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1845–46 (1899, new ed. 1930); R. Besier, The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1930), the most popular dramatization of the Brownings' love story; biographies by G. B. Taplin (1957), I. C. Clarke (1929, repr. 1970), and M. Forster (1989); The Courtship of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning (1985) by D. Karlin; studies by H. Cooper (1988) and G. Stephenson (1989); bibliography by W. Barnes (1967).

 
Quotes By: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Quotes:

"A woman's always younger than a man at equal years."

"At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction."

"The devil's most devilish when respectable."

"What monster have we here? A great Deed at this hour of day? A great just deed -- and not for pay? Absurd -- or insincere?"

"Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, and flare up bodily, wings and all. What then? Who's sorry for a gnat or girl?"

"Experience, like a pale musician, holds a dulcimer of patience in his hand."

See more famous quotes by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 
Wikipedia: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A portrait of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Born: March 6, 1806
Durham, England
Died: June 29, 1861
Florence, Italy
Occupation: Poet
Influenced: Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Dante Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (March 6, 1806June 29, 1861) was one of the most respected poets of the Victorian era.

Biography

Sarah Barrett Moulton: “Pinkie” by Thomas Lawrence. Oil on canvas, 57½" x 39¼" (146 x 100 cm).
Enlarge
Sarah Barrett Moulton: “Pinkie” by Thomas Lawrence. Oil on canvas, 57½" x 39¼" (146 x 100 cm).

Elizabeth spent her youth at Hope End near Great Malvern, England. The Barrett family had amassed a considerable fortune from the Jamaican sugar plantations inherited by her father, Edward Moulton Barrett, who was born there. The Barretts had been associated with Jamaica for generations. As a boy he emigrated to England with his brother and sister (she is the subject of the painting "Pinkie" in the Huntington Museum). He and his wife, Mary Graham-Clarke, were parents of twelve children (Elizabeth was the eldest). Elizabeth was educated at home, but owed in part her profound knowledge of the Greek language to her early friendship with the blind scholar, Hugh Stuart Boyd, who was a neighbor. She attended lessons with her brother's tutor and was thus well-educated for a girl of that time. At Boyd's suggestion, she translated Aeschylus's "Prometheus Bound" (published in 1833; retranslated in 1850).

In her early teens, Elizabeth contracted a lung complaint, possibly tuberculosis, although the exact nature of her illness has been the subject of speculation. She was subsequently regarded as an invalid by her family. The first poem we have a record of is from the age of six or eight (the manuscript is in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library; the date is in question because the 2 in the date 1812 is written over something else that is scratched out). A long Homeric poem titled "The Battle of Marathon" was published when she was fourteen, her father underwriting its cost. In 1826 she published her first collection of poems, "An Essay on Mind and Other Poems."

The abolition of slavery, a cause which she supported (see her work The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point (1849)), considerably reduced Mr. Barrett's means. He sold his estate and moved with his family first to Sidmouth and afterwards to London. After the move to London, she continued to write, contributing to various periodicals "The Romaunt of Margaret", "The Romaunt of the Page", "The Poet's Vow", and other pieces, and corresponded with literary figures of the time, including Mary Russell Mitford. In 1838 appeared The Seraphim and Other Poems (including "Cowper's Grave").

The death of her brother, Edward (who drowned in a sailing accident at Torquay), in 1840 had a serious effect on her already fragile health; and for several years she rarely left her bedroom. Eventually, however, she regained strength, and meanwhile her fame was growing. The publishing about 1841 of "The Cry of the Children" gave it a great impulse, and about the same time she contributed some critical papers in prose to Richard Henry Horne's New Spirit of the Age. In 1844 she published two volumes of Poems, which included "A Drama of Exile", "Vision of Poets", and "Lady Geraldine's Courtship".

In 1845 she met for the first time her future husband, Robert Browning, who had written to her after the publication of her Poems. Their courtship and marriage, owing to her delicate health and the extraordinary objections made by Mr. Barrett to the marriage of any of his children, were carried out secretly. After a private marriage at St Marylebone Parish Church, she accompanied her husband to the Italian Peninsula, which became her home almost continuously until her death.

The union proved a happy one. In her new circumstances Elizabeth's strength greatly increased, and she gave birth to a son, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, called "Pen," at the age of 43. The Brownings settled in Florence, and there she wrote Casa Guidi Windows (1851) — considered by many to be her strongest work — under the inspiration of the Tuscan struggle for liberty, with which she and her husband were in sympathy. In Florence she became close friend of British-born poets Isabella Blagden and Theodosia Trollope Garrow.

Aurora Leigh, her most ambitious, and perhaps the most popular of her longer poems, appeared in 1856.

Among Browning's best known lyrics is Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) - the 'Portuguese' being her husband's petname for dark-haired Elizabeth, but it could refer to the series of sonnets of the 16th-century Portuguese poet Luis de Camões. Which is probable, because in all these poems she used rhymes schemes typical of the Portuguese sonnets. In 1860 she issued a small volume of political poems titled Poems before Congress. Her health underwent a change for the worse; she gradually lost strength, and died on June 29, 1861. She is buried in Florence in the English Cemetery, Florence.

Mrs. Browning was a woman of singular nobility and charm. Mary Russell Mitford thus describes her as a young woman: "A slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on each side of a most expressive face; large, tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, and a smile like a sunbeam." Anne Thackeray Ritchie described her as: "Very small and brown" with big, exotic eyes and an overgenerous mouth.

Literary significance

Barrett Browning is generally considered one of the great English poets. Her works address a wide range of issues and ideas; she was learned and thoughtful, influencing many of her contemporaries, including Robert Browning. Her own sufferings, combined with her moral and intellectual strength, made her the champion of the suffering and oppressed. Her gift was essentially lyrical, though much of her work was not so in form. Her weak points are the lack of compression, an occasional somewhat obtrusive mannerism, and experimentation both in metre and rhyme.

Her most famous work is Sonnets from the Portuguese, a collection of love sonnets disguised as a translation. By far the most famous poem from this collection, with one of the most famous opening lines in the English language, is number 43:

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Enlarge
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints!---I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!---and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

But while her Petrarchan Sonnets from the Portuguese are exquisite, she was also a prophetic, indeed epic, poet, writing Casa Guidi Windows in support of Italy's Risorgimento, as had Byron supported Greece's liberation from Turkey, and writing Aurora Leigh, in nine books. She sets Aurora Leigh in Florence, England and Paris, using in it her knowledge from childhood of the Bible in Hebrew, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Apuleius, Dante, Langland, Madame de Stael, and George Sand.

The government of Italy and the Commune of Florence celebrated her poetry with commemorative plaques on Casa Guidi, where the Brownings had lived during their 15 year marriage. Lord Leighton designed her tomb in the English Cemetery, its sculpting in Carrara marble being carried out, not faithfully, by Francesco Giovannozzo. In 2006 the Comune of Florence laid a laurel wreath on this tomb to mark 200 years since her birth.

In Popular Culture

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's father is mentioned in Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie as "Mr. Barrett of Wimpole Street".

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was mentioned in an episode of Life with Derek when Casey and Kendra were working on a poetry project together.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was also the name of Diane's cat who passed away in an episode of Cheers


See also

Avery, Simon, and Rebecca Stott. "Elizabeth Barrett Browning." (Longmans, 2005) (Critical study of the poet's life and works.)

Barrett, R.A. "The Barretts of Jamaica: The Family of Elizabeth Barrett Browning." (Wedgestone, 2000). (Account of the lives of the descendants of Hercie Barrett, from 1655; with extensive genealogy.)

Donaldson, Sandra. "Critical Essays on Elizabeth Barrett Browning." (G.K. Hall, 1999)

_____. "Elizabeth Barrett Browning: An Annotated Bibliography of the Commentary and Criticism from 1826 to 1990." (G.K. Hall, 1993).

Karlin, Daniel. The courtship of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. (Oxford, 1985) (Critical biography focused on the courtship correspondence.)

Kelley, Philip et al. (Eds.) The Brownings' correspondence. 15 vols. to date. (Wedgestone, 1984-) (Complete letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning, so far to 1849.)

Garrett, Martin (Ed.) Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning: Interviews and Recollections (Basingstoke and London, 2000). (Accounts of both poets by themselves and others.)

Woolf, Virginia. Flush: A Biography (Biographical novella written from the perspective of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog, principally of curiosity value.)

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Who2 Biography. Copyright © 1998-2008 by Who2, LLC. All rights reserved. See the Elizabeth Barrett Browning biography from Who2.  Read more
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From Today's Highlights
March 6, 2006

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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