Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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Standard Name: Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
Birth Name: Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett
Nickname: Ba
Pseudonym: EBB
Married Name: Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Browning
Used Form: E. B. Barrett
Used Form: Elizabeth B. Barrett
Used Form: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
Used Form: E.B.B.
Used Form: E. B. B.
EBB was recognized in her lifetime as one of the most important poets of mid-Victorian Britain. She wrote a significant corpus of poetry which ranges from the lyric through the closet drama or dramatic lyric and the dramatic monologue to the epic, as well as letters and criticism. For much of the twentieth century, interest in her focused on her romantic life-story, her letters, and Sonnets from the Portuguese. Late in the century, critical interest in her epic female künstlerroman or verse novel Aurora Leigh and her other political poetry—in which she took up the causes of working-class children, the abolition of slavery, women's issues, and the Italian Risorgimento—revived. She is again considered one of the leading and most influential voices of her day.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Isa Blagden
Elizabeth Barrett Browning had a valuable friend in IB , who nursed Elizabeth in Florence until her death on 29 June 1861, and continued afterwards to help in the upbringing of the Brownings' son, Pen .
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Browning, Robert, and Isa Blagden. “Introduction”. Dearest Isa: Robert Browning’s Letters to Isabella Blagden, edited by Edward C. McAleer, Greenwood Press, p. xix - xxxiii.
xxiv
death Isa Blagden
Her grave is near those of her friends Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Theodosia Trollope and Frances Trollope ).
Author summary Mathilde Blind
MB was one of the leading poets of the later nineteenth century; her burning sense of political and social injustice runs like a unifying thread through her work. Her poetry combines great beauty of sound...
Literary responses Mathilde Blind
Reviewers loved this volume. They praised MB 's power of characterisation in The Prophecy of St Oran, the sonorous beauty of her lines
Blind, Mathilde. The Ascent of Man. Chatto and Windus.
2
combined with simple and straightforward vocabulary, her dramatic power, and...
Literary responses Mathilde Blind
This poem was greeted with a chorus of warm though not unqualified journalistic praise. The Athenæum called it one of the most noticeable and moving poems which recent years have added to our shelves.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
3064 (17 July 1886): 76
Intertextuality and Influence Mathilde Blind
The Ascent of Man gathers together a number of longer and shorter poems (written with immense energy in varying metres), but through the whole runs the theme of human life springing from a struggle for...
Family and Intimate relationships Dorothy Boulger
Dorothy's sister Alice Havers , three years younger, became an illustrator of books who worked on writings by DB and Elizabeth Barrett Browning , among others.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Friends, Associates Caroline Bowles
Talk about the conflict at Greta Hall circulated through England's literary circles. Henry Crabb Robinson , Sarah Burney , Elizabeth Barrett Browning , and Mary Russell Mitford were all privy to this gossip.
Blain, Virginia. Caroline Bowles Southey, 1786-1854. Ashgate.
4
Literary responses Caroline Bowles
A few months after publication, The Birth-Day was read with very much pleasure by the William WordsworthWordsworth clan.
Blain, Virginia. Caroline Bowles Southey, 1786-1854. Ashgate.
122
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Mary Russell Mitford discussed it in an exchange of letters. While Mitford thought...
Textual Production Muriel Box
MB wrote poetry during adolescence, stopped writing it during her first marriage, and began again when that ended. She suspected that either acute stress or intense happiness was necessary for her to produce it.
Box, Muriel. Odd Woman Out. Leslie Frewin.
prelims
Friends, Associates Mary Boyle
Her nephew notes that she was everywhere popular . . . due to the fact that she hated scandal and eschewed gossip.
Boyle, Mary. Mary Boyle. Her Book. Editor Boyle, Sir Courtenay Edmund, E. P. Dutton; John Murray.
x
Elizabeth Barrett Browning describes her in a similar light, a kinder, more...
Leisure and Society Mary Boyle
MB was an avid reader. Her favourite authors included Walter Landor , with whom she exchanged frequent letters, the BrowningsRobert Browning , and most especially, her literary godfather, G. P. R. James .
Boyle, Mary. Mary Boyle. Her Book. Editor Boyle, Sir Courtenay Edmund, E. P. Dutton; John Murray.
x
Literary responses Emily Brontë
This bowdlerized version of EB 's novel and her poetry circulated widely and received many reviews. H. F. Chorley in the Athenæum pronounced the re-publication of the two novels an illustration of English female genius...
Anthologization Robert Browning
Richard Hengist Horne published A New Spirit of the Age, with contributions from a number of authors including Elizabeth Barrett and RB (who had yet to meet).
Browning, Robert, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. “Editorial Materials”. The Brownings’ Correspondence, edited by Philip Kelley et al., Wedgestone Press, p. Various pages.
8: xii
Forster, Margaret. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A Biography. Grafton.
379-80
Irvine, William, and Park Honan. The Book, the Ring, and the Poet: A Biography of Robert Browning. McGraw-Hill.
132
Family and Intimate relationships Robert Browning
Following an intense epistolary courtship and occasional personal meetings, on 12 September 1846, RB secretly married Elizabeth Barrett , in defiance of her domineering father. The newlyweds eloped to Italy, where they lived until...

Timeline

1897: Artisan Phoebe Traquair completed her lavishly...

Building item

1897

Artisan Phoebe Traquair completed her lavishly illustrated manuscript of Elizabeth Barrett Browning 's Sonnets from the Portuguese.
The National Library of Scotland, where the manuscript is housed, notes that the transcriptions are from Traquair's...

19 July 1904: King Edward VII laid the foundation stone...

Building item

19 July 1904

King Edward VII laid the foundation stone for Liverpool Cathedral, built to the designs of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott .

February 1930: D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee published...

Writing climate item

February 1930

D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee published The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse, which includes bad poetry by John Dryden , John Keats , and Elizabeth Barrett Browning along with other canonical figures.

May 1975: Cora Kaplan edited the first modern anthology...

Women writers item

May 1975

Cora Kaplan edited the first modern anthology of women's poetry in Britain: Salt and Bitter and Good: three centuries of English and American women poets, published by Paddington Press .

Texts

Browning, Robert, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The Brownings’ Correspondence. Editors Kelley, Philip et al., Wedgestone Press, 1984.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. The Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Editors Clarke, Helen A. and Charlotte Porter, AMS Press, 1973.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Editor Kenyon, Frederic G., Macmillan, 1897.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 1836-1854. Editors Raymond, Meredith B. and Mary Rose Sullivan, Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University, 1983.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. The Poets’ Enchiridion. Printed exclusively for members of the Bibliophile Society, 1914.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. The Seraphim, and Other Poems. Saunders and Otley, 1838.