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.
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
Mary Howitt
The Improvisatore was much admired by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford University Press.
Literary responses
Bessie Rayner Parkes
Leighton
and Reynolds
suggest that this poem, together with Barrett Browning
's Aurora Leigh, is one of the few bold attempts to tackle the woman question in verse and it is clearly influenced by...
Literary responses
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
The book was reviewed by Louis Untermeyer
in the Dial. The American Review of Reviews propagated the opinion that these sonnets would take their place beside Mrs. Browning
's 'Sonnets from the Portuguese'because...
Literary responses
Mary Russell Mitford
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
Literary responses
Elizabeth Gaskell
Around the time of Ruth's appearance, Swedish novelist and feminist Fredrika Bremer
(who was probably introduced to EG
by William
and Mary Howitt
) wrote: Dear Elizabeth, dear sister in spirit, if I may...
Literary responses
Camilla Crosland
CC
enjoyed moderate success during her life. Her writings earned her a modest income (in the 1840s it was about fifty pounds a year) and the critics were generally complimentary.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
A review in the Morning...
Literary responses
Emily Brontë
This bowdlerized version of EB
's novel and her poetry circulated widely and received many reviews. H. F. Chorley
in the Athenæum pronounced the re-publication of the two novels an illustration of English female genius...
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.
27-8
Charles Duffy
described her writing as a substantial force in Irish politics, the vehement will of a woman of...
Literary responses
Eliza Ogilvy
One critic felt that Mrs. Ogilvy is among those who have listened too long and too submissively to Tennyson
and the BrowningsRobert Browning
.
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.
xviii
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
Felicia Hemans
Maria Jane Jewsbury
had already begun the idealisation of FH
in 1830 with her portrait of Egeria in The History of a Nonchalant: a muse, a grace, a variable child, a dependent woman—the Italy...
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...
Literary responses
Sarah Williams
Geraldine Jewsbury
wrote a review of Twilight Hours for the Athenæum in which she describes SW
's work as promising, but unfulfilled and melancholy. The review explains that her life . . . seems to...
Literary responses
Felicia Hemans
FH
remained continuously in print throughout the Victorian period, but her critical reputation and popularity waned before its close and died with modernism. She lingered on in popular memory as the author of popular recitation...