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.
The friendship between EO
and Elizabethran the course of most friendships, vacillating between spirited intimacy and formal disagreement.
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, pp. xi - xxiv; 175.
xiv
Barrett Browning always spoke of Ogilvy highly, but even though the friendship between the two...
BBBD
's circle of friends at this period of her life, many of them entertained by herself and her husband at the Hoo but many whose relationship with her went back to long before her...
Friends, Associates
Isa Blagden
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
had a valuable friend in IB
, who nursed Elizabeth in Florence until her death on 29 June 1861, and continued afterwards to help in the upbringing of the Brownings' son, Pen
.
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.
Browning, Robert, and Isa Blagden. “Introduction”. Dearest Isa: Robert Browning’s Letters to Isabella Blagden, edited by Edward C. McAleer, Greenwood Press, p. xix - xxxiii.
xxiv
Friends, Associates
Jane Loudon
Catherine Crowe
, initially a friend of both JL
and her husband, stayed a while with Jane and her daughter in summer 1850, and shared her interest in spiritualism with Agnes. About four years later...
Friends, Associates
Henrietta Euphemia Tindal
Friends with whom she maintained contact by correspondence included her neighbour Mary Russell Mitford
, who commented to Elizabeth Barrett Browning
that HET
had been wrong in her theory about the authorship of Jane Eyre...
She was frequently sought out by British writers during these years, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning
and Charles Dickens. Browning addressed two sonnets to Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man, / Self-called George Sand,
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. The Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Editors Clarke, Helen A. and Charlotte Porter, AMS Press.
2: 239
Friends, Associates
Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, first Earl Lytton
His international travel and family ties to England's literary scene ensured him a wide social circle. He knew Charles Dickens
, John Forster
, and Frances Mary Peard
. While living in Florence, he became...
Health
Adelaide Procter
AP
's health was poor from an early age. A letter from William Thackeray
describes her at the age of fourteen as vomiting basins of blood. She went to Italy for a year in 1853-54...