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.
Eric Robertson
in English Poetesses, 1883, suggested that HHK
's writings excelled those of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
on the same topic in their truth and spontaneity.
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 199. Gale Research.
The Disciples employs feminised imagery similar to that of many other female writers on the Risorgimento. Although HHK
focuses her narrative on prominent male historical figures, the sacrifices for the unification movement that she portrays...
Reception
Harriet Hamilton King
Despite the popularity of HHK
's work into the twentieth century, it has not fared well critically. She has seldom been mentioned in recent critical discussions, although several of her poems are anthologized in feminist...
Intertextuality and Influence
Adelaide Kemble
Bessie and her more assertive friend Ursula Hamilton are challenged by men in their social circle about the alleged inferiority of women, as proved by their failure to produce serious artistic work. Bessie thinks of...
Friends, Associates
Fanny Kemble
During an earlier visit to Italy in the summer of 1853, FK
's social circle had included Robert
and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
, and her former acquaintance Harriet Hosmer
. She met the young Anne Thackeray
in Rome.
Clinton, Catherine. Fanny Kemble’s Civil Wars. Simon and Schuster.
156
Marshall, Dorothy. Fanny Kemble. Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
227
Literary responses
Fanny Kemble
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
thought that Kemble's poetry was inelastic . . . unpliant to her age.
Adey, Lionel, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 32. Gale Research.
Adey, Lionel, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 32. Gale Research.
180
though they were thought serious enough for review in the...
Leisure and Society
Adelaide Kemble
In Rome AK
and her husband entertained what her friend Elizabeth Barrett Browning
described as the best company.
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.
In 1860 the painter Frederic Leighton
did a striking portrait of her daughter, May
.
“Frederic Leighton: Miss May Sartoris”. Kimbell Art Museum Fort Worth: Collections: European.
Particularly in its foregrounding of religion in its attack on racial inequality, this poem seems indebted to Elizabeth Barrett Browning
's The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point.
Textual Production
Sophia Jex-Blake
Jex-Blake's essay was heavily influenced by her relationship with Dr Lucy Sewall
. By her late twenties, Sewall had established a national reputation for her work as a woman doctor. SJB
also drew on a...
Textual Production
Sophia Jex-Blake
Her dedication characterizes Sewall as having demonstrated the incalculable blessings [that] may be conferred on the sick and suffering of her own sex, by a noble and pure-minded woman who is also a thoroughly scientific...
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...
Textual Production
Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
Francesca Elgee set the tone for her correspondence with John Hilson
in her earliest surviving letter, writing your Gods are my Gods about her favourite modern living poets, Tennyson
and Elizabeth Barrett
, who...
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...