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 Athenæum reviewer predicted a career of continued success for DG
: her present is full of promise, her future full of hope. . . . Let her only get more experience into fewer words...
Literary responses
Augusta Webster
The first Dictionary of National Biography praised AW
's abilities as a poet and claimed a lasting place for her in the English poetic tradition, but by 1914 Watts-Dunton was complaining about her exclusion from...
Literary responses
George Sand
Other British women writers also found their admiration mingled with disapprobation. Elizabeth Barrett
read GS
eagerly and recognised her importance, but reflected the opinion of many in often finding the writing inappropriate for a woman...
Literary responses
Amelia Opie
AO
's novels, which formed a comparatively minor part of her output, had an impact beyond the rest of her work. Literary historian Gary Kelly
notes that when they were new they commanded among the...
Literary responses
Frances Trollope
Response to Michael Armstrong was strong, both among readers who accepted FT
's representation of child labour and among those who rejected her descriptions as too explicit. Among the series of Factory Acts passed this...
Literary responses
Una Marson
A review in the Jamaica Times described UM
as a fine talent
Jarrett-Macauley, Delia. The Life of Una Marson, 1905-65. Manchester University Press.
41
and likened one of her sonnets, Vows, to those of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
.
Jarrett-Macauley, Delia. The Life of Una Marson, 1905-65. Manchester University Press.
41
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
Literary responses
Ouida
Critic Kenneth Churchill
argues that Ouida was the first English writer to chronicle the sense of growing disillusion
Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Gale Research.
43: 376
with the practical outcomes of the new state established in Italy by the Risorgimento. She...
Literary responses
Adelaide Procter
The Spectator greeted this collection effusively as without question the most promising of any first appearance in this century, except that of Keats
, and the Saturday Review asserted, presumably with reference to Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Literary responses
Anna Wickham
Untermeyer
's introduction praised AW
's acid overtones of irony,
Untermeyer, Louis, and Anna Wickham. “Introduction”. The Contemplative Quarry; and, The Man with a Hammer, Harcourt, Brace and Company, p. vii - xv.
ix, x
and the unusual combination of lyricism and astringency in her work. It heralded her as the most typical and, in many ways, the...
Literary responses
Dinah Mulock Craik
Mary Russell Mitford
supposed from reading this book that its author was Elizabeth Barrett Browning
.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
(9 March 1872): 298
She may, however, have been building on another's opinion, for the Athenæum reviewer found abundant...
Literary responses
Adelaide Procter
Athenæum reviewer H. F. Chorley
, sandwiching his discussion of A Chaplet of Verses between those of two other works by earnest women, expressed some annoyance at its assured and zealous sectarianism and regretted...
