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.
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...
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...
Reception
Constance Naden
He offered a list of the best eight women poets, where CN
was included together with Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(at the head) and Christina Rossetti
(who was annoyed that he omitted Augusta Webster
). He...
Textual Features
Anne Mozley
Wordsworth observed of her poetry anthologies in general that they mixed the contemporary with the canonical: Spenser
, Cowley
. . . stand side by side with Monckton Milnes
and Miss Barrett
.
Wordsworth, John, and Anne Mozley. “Memoir”. Essays from "Blackwood", edited by F. Mozley and F. Mozley, William Blackwood and Sons, p. xii - xx.
ix
Textual Features
Toni Morrison
The protagonist of the novel, Sethe, is a mother bereaved by slavery, herself a slave who ran awayfrom the ironically-named Sweet Home in Kentucky to Ohio, when the institution of slavery was nearing its...
Education
L. M. Montgomery
LMM
attended a one-room schoolhouse across the road from her grandparents' farmhouse, completing her time there in 1892. The following year, she went to the Prince of Wales College
in Charlottetown for teacher training. Her...
Textual Production
Mary Russell Mitford
She both wrote for it herself and edited the work of contributors. On acceptance of the work, she had only a month for complete preparation of the volume: to commission one piece each from six...
Textual Production
Mary Russell Mitford
During the same year she worked on translating Balzac
for young English readers, a scheme suggested to her by her discussions with Elizabeth Barrett Browning
about French fiction.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
116: 196
Reception
Mary Russell Mitford
To Elizabeth Barrett
she was more outspoken: I speak the real truth in saying that I do not like it.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers.
2: 193
Textual Features
Mary Russell Mitford
MRM
here mixed personal gossip, local scene-painting, criticism, and extracts.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Recollections of a Literary Life; or, Books, Places and People. R. Bentley.
Elizabeth Barrett
and Robert Browning
were dismayed at the violation of their privacy (and particularly the treatment of Edward Barrett
's drowning) by MRM
's Recollections.
Taplin, Gardner B. The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Yale University Press.
258
Textual Production
Mary Russell Mitford
The editor of this second selection of Mitford's letters was Henry Chorley
. Her Correspondence with Charles Boner
and John Ruskin followed in 1914. R. Brimley Johnson
published another selection of her letters in 1925...
Friends, Associates
Mary Russell Mitford
MRM
first met the young Elizabeth Barrett (later Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
, in London, though Barrett's cousin John Kenyon
.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers.
2: 174
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
116: 196
Residence
Mary Russell Mitford
The first period of poverty after his marriage caused him to move his family from Alresford in Hampshire. (MRM
later remembered the Hampshire countryside with warm affection, and delighted in its nearness to...
Leisure and Society
Mary Russell Mitford
MRM
delighted in owning dogs. Her greyhounds or spaniels accompanied her on the country walks which were one of her chief forms of recreation, and supplied innumerable stories for her letters. One beloved pet, Flush...
