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.
After the inaugural lecture, the New York Herald called her words very chaste and poetical and her enunciation clear and distinct.
qtd. in
Daniels, Elizabeth Adams. Jessie White Mario: Risorgimento Revolutionary. Ohio University Press, 1972.
75
When her thoughts turned to the Italian struggle, her brilliant eyes flashed like...
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
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
Mary Howitt
Mary Russell Mitford
confided to Elizabeth Barrett
, who had been charmed by The Neighbours, that she thought the translations' lack of popularity a sign of the poor taste of English novel-readers. Ah! dearest...
Literary responses
E. Nesbit
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
Jane Francesca Lady Wilde
The future JFLW
's early verse inspired many to submit articles to the Nation.
Wyndham, Horace. Speranza. T. V. Boardman, 1951.
27-8
Charles Duffy
described her writing as a substantial force in Irish politics, the vehement will of a woman of...
Literary responses
Maria Jane Jewsbury
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...
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
Mary Howitt
The Improvisatore was much admired by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.
Literary responses
Jane Francesca Lady Wilde
The April 1865Dublin Review said the collection recalls . . . the awful state of the country—the corpses that were buried without coffins, and the men and women that walked the roads more like...
Literary responses
Julia Pardoe
This book was praised by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Kadar
credits Pardoe and Catherine Gore
as the first British writers to observe the modern form of nationalism that was emerging in Hungary in the mid-nineteenth...
Literary responses
Una Marson
A review in the Jamaica Times described UM
as a fine talent
qtd. in
Jarrett-Macauley, Delia. The Life of Una Marson, 1905-65. Manchester University Press, 1998.
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, 1998.
41
Literary responses
Christina Rossetti
The London Review was very positive, considering the writing the genuine utterance of a richly imaginative mind and of a very high order.
qtd. in
Marsh, Jan. Christina Rossetti: A Writer’s Life. Viking, 1995.
28
The Spectator talked about CR
's genius and artistic discrimination. Other...
Literary responses
Ouida
Critic Kenneth Churchill
argues that Ouida was the first English writer to chronicle the sense of growing disillusion
qtd. in
Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Gale Research, 1978–2024, Numerous volumes.
43: 376
with the practical outcomes of the new state established in Italy by the Risorgimento. She...
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...
