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.
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
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
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
, 1943, 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, 1970, 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, 1970, p. xix - xxxiii.
xxviii
Raymond, William O. “Our Lady of Bellosguardo: A Pastel Portrait”. University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol.
Whether by design or coincidence, their marriage date was the same chosen in 1846 by Elizabeth Barrett
and...
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, 1930.
21, 44, 50-1, 228
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
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
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 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, 1973, pp. xi - xxiv; 175.
xxii
Leighton, Angela, and Margaret Reynolds, editors. Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology. Blackwell, 1995.
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
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.
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, 1947.
7n
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
Margaret Fuller
Of the Fuller-Ossoli marriage, Barrett Browning
(who described first learning of it as a surprise), wrote: the husband is a Roman marquis . . . appearing amiable & gentlemanly, & having fought well, they say...
Friends, Associates
Jessie White Mario
While visiting Italy, JWM
stayed with Robert
and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
at Casa Guidi. (Years later they had an unpleasant public debate over Italian politics.) She met Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
in Rome, beginning...
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...
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.
Byatt, A. S. Indexers and Indexes in Fact and Fiction. Editor Bell, Hazel K., University of Toronto, 2001.
110
Lewis, D. B. Wyndham et al. The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse. 2nd edition, Capricorn, 1962.
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
.
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.
British Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons, 1874–1987.
1976
Texts
Browning, Robert, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The Brownings’ Correspondence. Editors Kelley, Philip et al., Wedgestone Press, 1984, 14 vols. to date.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. The Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Editors Clarke, Helen A. and Charlotte Porter, AMS Press, 1973, 6 vols.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Editor Kenyon, Frederic G., Macmillan, 1897, 2 vols.
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, 3 vols.
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.
