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 Improvisatore was much admired by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford University Press.
Reception
Mary Howitt
The assessment of her literary contribution has been negatively impacted by the fact that she published much work in periodicals and wrote much for children and the working classes. Her collaboration with her husband was...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Catherine Hume
In the first section of the poem, the lord of Normiton Hall, Albert, is inspired to wed. His first choice is Maud, a woman who shares his philosophical interests. She declines however, since her faith...
Textual Features
Mary Catherine Hume
The other poems in the collection touch on the Crystal Palace (recently moved to its permanent home in Sydenham just south of London), Emanuel Swedenborg
, and MCH
's father, Joseph Hume
.
Hume, Mary Catherine. Normiton. J. W. Parker and Son.
prelims
Author summary
Jean Ingelow
JI
's writings spanned the second half of the nineteenth century and led to an immense popularity during her lifetime. She published five volumes of poetry, eighteen works for children, five novels, and a verse...
Literary responses
Jean Ingelow
Arthur Munby
, meeting JI
in early 1864, pronounced what became a commonly-held view, that she was second only to Mrs Browning
as a poetess. An unsuccessful poet himself, he was relieved of the...
Intertextuality and Influence
Jean Ingelow
The work's title poem is a lengthy epic retelling of the story of Noah's ark from the Bible. Scholar Terence Allan Hoagwood
likens it to Elizabeth Barrett Browning
's A Drama of Exile and...
Whether by design or coincidence, their marriage date was the same chosen in 1846 by Elizabeth Barrett
and...
Textual Production
Kathleen E. Innes
Kathleen E. Royds
(later Innes) published Elizabeth Barrett Browning
and her Poetry, a bio-critical analysis, in William Henry Hudson
's Poetry and Life Series.
Harvey, Kathryn. "Driven by War into Politics": A Feminist Biography of Kathleen Innes. University of Alberta.
206
Textual Production
Lucille Iremonger
LI
published another fictionalised biography, this time of Robert
and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
. It was entitled (from Elizabeth's famous poem) How Do I Love Thee.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Textual Production
Henry James
Although HJ
is best remembered as a novelist, he was also a prolific and insightful critic of literature and the arts. Over the course of his career he reviewed many novels by British women writers...
Friends, Associates
Anna Brownell Jameson
ABJ
was introduced to Elizabeth Barrett
by John Kenyon
.
Thomas, Clara. Love and Work Enough: The Life of Anna Jameson. University of Toronto Press.
169
Friends, Associates
Anna Brownell Jameson
ABJ
and her niece Gerardine
departed for Paris, where they encountered the BrowningsRobert Browning
, who had just eloped, and all four travelled together to Pisa.
Thomas, Clara. Love and Work Enough: The Life of Anna Jameson. University of Toronto Press.
169-70
Textual Production
Anna Brownell Jameson
For this collection, ABJ
obtained from Elizabeth Barrett
two translations of lines from the Odyssey for one of the essays, The Xanthian Marbles.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Shattock, Joanne. The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. Oxford University Press.
229
The collection included the essay Women's Mission and Women's Position...
Textual Production
Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
Francesca Elgee set the tone for her correspondence with John Hilson
in her earliest surviving letter, writing your Gods are my Gods about her favourite modern living poets, Tennyson
and Elizabeth Barrett
, who...