Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
-
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.
Following her untimely death, writers such as Felicia Hemans
and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
expressed regret that the extraordinary powers of MJJ
's mind (particularly remarkable, said Barrett Browning, in a woman) had failed to produce...
Literary responses
Caroline Bowles
A few months after publication, The Birth-Day was read with very much pleasure by the William WordsworthWordsworth
clan.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
and Mary Russell Mitford
discussed it in an exchange of letters. While Mitford thought...
Literary responses
Harriet Martineau
HM
was highly regarded by many other women writers of her day. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
pronounced her the most manlike woman in the three kingdoms (that is, in England, Scotland, and Ireland)...
Literary responses
Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
The future JFLW
's early verse inspired many to submit articles to the Nation.
Wyndham, Horace. Speranza. T. V. Boardman.
27-8
Charles Duffy
described her writing as a substantial force in Irish politics, the vehement will of a woman of...
Literary responses
Mary Howitt
Mary Russell Mitford
confided to Elizabeth Barrett
, who had been charmed by The Neighbours, that she thought the translations' lack of popularity a sign of the poor taste of English novel-readers. Ah! dearest...
Literary responses
Christina Rossetti
The London Review was very positive, considering the writing the genuine utterance of a richly imaginative mind and of a very high order.
Marsh, Jan. Christina Rossetti: A Writer’s Life. Viking.
28
The Spectator talked about CR
's genius and artistic discrimination. Other...
Literary responses
Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
The April 1865Dublin Review said the collection recalls . . . the awful state of the country—the corpses that were buried without coffins, and the men and women that walked the roads more like...
Literary responses
Mary Howitt
The Improvisatore was much admired by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford University Press.
Literary Setting
Linda Villari
In Change Unchanged is another of LV
's novels with a plethora of landscape description and hints of the autobiographical. Throughout the life journey of its protagonist, Edith Henderson, which includes the seclusion and loneliness...
Occupation
Coventry Patmore
Its conservative gender politics coupled with its immense popularity made The Angel in the House a target of criticism for feminists. There are oblique references to it in Elizabeth Barrett Browning
's Aurora Leigh (1857)...
Occupation
Eliza Fenwick
It now seems that EF
was not the Mrs Fenwick who was running an admirable school at Flint House, Greenwich, just outside London, from at least the later 1780s well into the 1790s...
Her next idea was an exhibition of Dante
's Infernal Regions. Hervieu
painted the scenes, and the museum's own wax manipulator, Hiram Powers
, created the figures.
Hiram Powers
later became a celebrated sculptor...
Occupation
Richard Hengist Horne
Educated at Sandhurst
, RHH
started writing and editing in his thirties after a spell in the Mexican navy. His verse was praised by Thomas Carlyle
and Edgar Allan Poe
. He also adapted plays...
Occupation
Richard Hengist Horne
Reports such as Horne's also provided writers of protest literature such as Benjamin Disraeli
, Charles Dickens
, and Elizabeth Gaskell
with material which they incorporated into their fiction. Elizabeth Barrett
's The Cry of...