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.
When EN
asked Bernard Shaw
to review the first Lays and Legends for To-Day, he responded with a pretend review contained in a letter, a masterpiece in faint praise: The author has a fair...
Literary responses
Robert Browning
This series was at least the catalyst for the first direct contact between RB
and his future wife, Elizabeth Barrett
, since she praised it in Lady Geraldine's Courtship, which she included in her...
Literary responses
Jessie White Mario
After the inaugural lecture, the New York Herald called her words very chaste and poetical and her enunciation clear and distinct.
Daniels, Elizabeth Adams. Jessie White Mario: Risorgimento Revolutionary. Ohio University Press.
75
When her thoughts turned to the Italian struggle, her brilliant eyes flashed like...
Literary responses
Augusta Webster
The Athenæum declared the play would strengthen AW
's reputation as a dramatist, calling the dialogue intellectual and subtle.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2878 (1882): 841
But although the review conceded that Webster has not strangled poetic art...
Literary responses
Eliza Cook
An 1848 preface to a US edition of her poems ranked EC
's popularity almost as high as that of Felicia Hemans
or Caroline Norton
. It characterises her work in terms of emotion and...
Literary responses
Edna St Vincent Millay
In The NationRolfe Humphries
responded with comment on the shape of her career, regretting that she had become a legend before becoming a success, that her public now included collectors as well as readers...
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
Harriet Hamilton King
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
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
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
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.
