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.
She was frequently sought out by British writers during these years, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning
and Charles Dickens. Browning addressed two sonnets to Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man, / Self-called George Sand,
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. The Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Editors Clarke, Helen A. and Charlotte Porter, AMS Press.
2: 239
Friends, Associates
Eliza Ogilvy
In the summer of 1849, the Ogilvys moved into an apartment above that of Robert
and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
in Casa Guidi, Florence.
Ogilvy, Eliza et al. “Introduction and Appendices”. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Letters to Mrs. David Ogilvy, edited by Peter N. Heydon and Philip Kelley, Quadrangle, pp. xi - xxiv; 175.
xiv
The families became good friends; according to Barrett Browning, quick...
Family and Intimate relationships
Matilda Hays
The intense relationship between MH
and Cushman is the subject of considerable debate over whether it constituted a lesbian union. After meeting the pair, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
wrote in a letter to a friend, I...
Family and Intimate relationships
Eliza Ogilvy
EO
's and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
's special relationship was centred around Eliza
's children, who were important to both the origin and continuation of the friendship.
Ogilvy, Eliza et al. “Introduction and Appendices”. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Letters to Mrs. David Ogilvy, edited by Peter N. Heydon and Philip Kelley, Quadrangle, pp. xi - xxiv; 175.
xxii
Leighton, Angela, and Margaret Reynolds, editors. Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology. Blackwell.
JW
, in her early thirties, launched what became a flirtatious as well as a literary exchange with Browning, who was in his fifties and whose wife Elizabeth
had died several years before. Scholars have...
Family and Intimate relationships
Alice Meynell
After a meeting in 1882, Robert Browning
noted a familial link between the Thompsons and the Barretts
.
Meynell, Viola. Alice Meynell: A Memoir. J. Cape.
7n
Family and Intimate relationships
Isa Blagden
It has been speculated that Lytton and IB
were romantically attached.
Raymond, William O. “Our Lady of Bellosguardo: A Pastel Portrait”. University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol.
xii
, pp. 446-63.
449
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.
xxviii
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
, among others, identified IB
as Cordelia in Robert Lytton's poem Warnings and as the heroine of his verse-novel Lucile.
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.
xxviii
Raymond, William O. “Our Lady of Bellosguardo: A Pastel Portrait”. University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol.
xii
, pp. 446-63.
451
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...
Family and Intimate relationships
Ella Hepworth Dixon
Ella's elder sister Edith
, who also wrote and who was a friend of Penn Browning
(son of Robert
and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
), died at the age of twenty-two.
Dixon, Ella Hepworth. "As I Knew Them". Huchinson.
21, 44, 50-1, 228
Family and Intimate relationships
Robert Browning
Crushed by the death of Elizabeth
and holding her memory in the highest regard, RB
seems never to have sought another partner despite being highly sociable and occasionally flirtatious. After her death, he returned to...
Family and Intimate relationships
Eliza Cook
After moving into the home of Weekly Dispatch editor James Harmer
, she became involved in a scandal (large enough to have been known to Elizabeth Barrett Browning
, who wrote of it to Mary Russell Mitford
Whether by design or coincidence, their marriage date was the same chosen in 1846 by Elizabeth Barrett
and...
Family and Intimate relationships
E. Nesbit
EN
first met Hubert Bland
in 1877. He was a good-looking political and intellectual idealist, and a womaniser. Born to a working-class family in Woolwich, he was running a business and had hopes of...
Family and Intimate relationships
Adelaide Procter
AP
's mother, born Anne Skepper
, was a clever and observant woman, a frequent and influential hostess to the London literary elite. Frances Kemble
considered her notable for her pungent epigrams and brilliant sallies...
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.