Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
"Earth's crammed with heaven,
"And every common bush afire with God." (12/12/2023)
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett 6 March 1806[a] Coxhoe, County Durham, England |
| Died | 29 June 1861 (aged 55) Florence, Italy |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Literary movement | Romanticism[1] |
| Spouse | |
| Children | Robert Barrett ("Pen")[2] |
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning (born March 6, 1806, near Durham, Durham county, England—died June 29, 1861, Florence, Italy) was an English poet whose reputation rests chiefly upon her love poems, Sonnets from the Portuguese and Aurora Leigh, the latter now considered an early feminist text. Her husband was Robert Browning.
Elizabeth was the eldest child of Edward Barrett Moulton (later Edward Moulton Barrett). Most of her girlhood was spent at a country house within sight of the Malvern Hills, in Worcestershire, where she was extraordinarily happy. At the age of 15, however, she fell seriously ill, probably as the result of a spinal injury, and her health was permanently affected.
In 1832 the family moved to Sidmouth, Devon, and in 1836 they moved to London, where in 1838 they took up residence at 50 Wimpole Street. In London she contributed to several periodicals, and her first collection, The Seraphim and Other Poems, appeared in 1838. For reasons of health, she spent the next three years in Torquay, Devon. After the death by drowning of her brother, Edward, she developed an almost morbid terror of meeting anyone apart from a small circle of intimates. Her name, however, was well known in literary circles, and in 1844 her second volume of poetry, Poems, by Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, was enthusiastically received.
In January 1845 she received from the poet Robert Browning a letter that begins with “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,” and culminates with “I do, as I say, love these books with all my heart—and I love you too.” In early summer the two met. Their courtship (whose daily progress is recorded in their letters) was kept a close secret from Elizabeth’s despotic father, of whom she stood in some fear. Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) records her reluctance to marry, but their wedding had taken place on September 12, 1846. Her father knew nothing of it, and Elizabeth continued to live at home for a week.
The Brownings then left for Pisa. (When Barrett died in 1857, Elizabeth was still unforgiven.) While in Pisa she wrote The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point (Boston, 1848; London, 1849), a protest against slavery in the United States. The couple then settled in Florence, where their only child, Robert Wiedemann Barrett, was born in 1849.
In 1851 and in 1855 the couple visited London. During the second visit, Elizabeth Barrett Browning completed her most ambitious work, Aurora Leigh (1857), a long blank-verse poem telling the complicated and melodramatic love story of a young girl and a misguided philanthropist. This work did not impress most critics, though it was a huge popular success.
During the last years of her life, Browning developed an interest in spiritualism and the occult, but her energy and attention were chiefly taken up by an obsession with Italian politics, to a degree that alarmed her closest friends. Casa Guidi Windows (1851) had been a deliberate attempt to win sympathy for the Florentines, and she continued to believe in the integrity of Napoleon III. In Poems Before Congress (1860), the poem “A Curse for a Nation” was mistaken for a denunciation of England, whereas it was aimed at U.S. slavery. In the summer of 1861 Browning suffered a severe chill and died.
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning (born March 6, 1806, near Durham, Durham county, England—died June 29, 1861, Florence, Italy) was an English poet whose reputation rests chiefly upon her love poems, Sonnets from the Portuguese and Aurora Leigh, the latter now considered an early feminist text. Her husband was Robert Browning.
Elizabeth was the eldest child of Edward Barrett Moulton (later Edward Moulton Barrett). Most of her girlhood was spent at a country house within sight of the Malvern Hills, in Worcestershire, where she was extraordinarily happy. At the age of 15, however, she fell seriously ill, probably as the result of a spinal injury, and her health was permanently affected.
In 1832 the family moved to Sidmouth, Devon, and in 1836 they moved to London, where in 1838 they took up residence at 50 Wimpole Street. In London she contributed to several periodicals, and her first collection, The Seraphim and Other Poems, appeared in 1838. For reasons of health, she spent the next three years in Torquay, Devon. After the death by drowning of her brother, Edward, she developed an almost morbid terror of meeting anyone apart from a small circle of intimates. Her name, however, was well known in literary circles, and in 1844 her second volume of poetry, Poems, by Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, was enthusiastically received.
In January 1845 she received from the poet Robert Browning a letter that begins with “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,” and culminates with “I do, as I say, love these books with all my heart—and I love you too.” In early summer the two met. Their courtship (whose daily progress is recorded in their letters) was kept a close secret from Elizabeth’s despotic father, of whom she stood in some fear. Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) records her reluctance to marry, but their wedding had taken place on September 12, 1846. Her father knew nothing of it, and Elizabeth continued to live at home for a week.
The Brownings then left for Pisa. (When Barrett died in 1857, Elizabeth was still unforgiven.) While in Pisa she wrote The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point (Boston, 1848; London, 1849), a protest against slavery in the United States. The couple then settled in Florence, where their only child, Robert Wiedemann Barrett, was born in 1849.
In 1851 and in 1855 the couple visited London. During the second visit, Elizabeth Barrett Browning completed her most ambitious work, Aurora Leigh (1857), a long blank-verse poem telling the complicated and melodramatic love story of a young girl and a misguided philanthropist. This work did not impress most critics, though it was a huge popular success.
During the last years of her life, Browning developed an interest in spiritualism and the occult, but her energy and attention were chiefly taken up by an obsession with Italian politics, to a degree that alarmed her closest friends. Casa Guidi Windows (1851) had been a deliberate attempt to win sympathy for the Florentines, and she continued to believe in the integrity of Napoleon III. In Poems Before Congress (1860), the poem “A Curse for a Nation” was mistaken for a denunciation of England, whereas it was aimed at U.S. slavery. In the summer of 1861 Browning suffered a severe chill and died.
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning (née Moulton-Barrett; 6 March 1806 – 29 June 1861) was an English poet of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime and frequently anthologised after her death. Her work received renewed attention following the feminist scholarship of the 1970s and 1980s, and greater recognition of women writers in English. Born in County Durham, the eldest of 12 children, Elizabeth Barrett wrote poetry from the age of eleven. Her mother's collection of her poems forms one of the largest extant collections of juvenilia by any English writer. At 15, she became ill, suffering intense head and spinal pain for the rest of her life. Later in life, she also developed lung problems, possibly tuberculosis. She took laudanum for the pain from an early age, which is likely to have contributed to her frail health.
In the 1840s, Elizabeth was introduced to literary society through her distant cousin and patron John Kenyon. Her first adult collection of poems was published in 1838, and she wrote prolifically from 1841 to 1844, producing poetry, translation, and prose. She campaigned for the abolition of slavery, and her work helped influence reform in child labour legislation. Her prolific output made her a rival to Tennyson as a candidate for poet laureate on the death of Wordsworth. Elizabeth's volume Poems (1844) brought her great success, attracting the admiration of the writer Robert Browning. Their correspondence, courtship, and marriage were carried out in secret, for fear of her father's disapproval. Following the wedding, she was indeed disinherited by her father. In 1846, the couple moved to Italy, where she lived for the rest of her life. Elizabeth died in Florence in 1861.[1][3] A collection of her later poems was published by her husband shortly after her death.
They had a son, known as "Pen" (Robert Barrett, 1849–1912). Pen devoted himself to painting until his eyesight began to fail later in life. He also built a large collection of manuscripts and memorabilia of his parents, but because he died intestate, it was sold by public auction to various bidders and then scattered upon his death. The Armstrong Browning Library has recovered some of his collection, and it now houses the world's largest collection of Browning memorabilia.[4] Elizabeth's work had a major influence on prominent writers of the day, including the American poets Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson. She is remembered for such poems as "How Do I Love Thee?" (Sonnet 43, 1845) and Aurora Leigh (1856).
Life and career
[edit]Family background
[edit]Elizabeth Barrett had both maternal and paternal family who profited from slavery. Her father's family had lived in the colony of Jamaica since 1655, though her father chose to raise his family in England, while his business enterprises remained in Jamaica. Their wealth derived primarily from the ownership of slave plantations in the British West Indies. Edward Barrett owned 10,000 acres (40 km2) of land in the estates of Cinnamon Hill, Cornwall, Cambridge and Oxford in northern Jamaica.[3][5]
Elizabeth's maternal grandfather owned sugar plantations, sugar cane mills, glassworks and merchant ships which traded between Jamaica and Newcastle upon Tyne.[3][6]
The family wished to hand down their name, stipulating that Barrett always should be held as a surname. In some cases, inheritance was given on condition that the name was used by the beneficiary; the British upper class had long encouraged this sort of name changing. Given this strong tradition, Elizabeth used "Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett" on legal documents, and before she was married, she often signed herself "Elizabeth Barrett Barrett" or "EBB" (initials which she was able to keep after her wedding).[3]
Early life
[edit]Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett was born on (it is supposed) 6 March 1806 in Coxhoe Hall, between the villages of Coxhoe and Kelloe in County Durham, England. Her parents were Edward Barrett Moulton-Barrett and Mary Graham Clarke. However, biographers have suggested[7] that, when she was christened on 9 March, she was already three or four months old, and that this was concealed because her parents had married only on 14 May 1805.[verification needed] Although she had already been baptised by a family friend in that first week of her life,[8] she was baptised again, more publicly, on 10 February 1808 at Kelloe parish church, at the same time as her younger brother, Edward (known as Bro). He had been born in June 1807, 15 months after Elizabeth's stated date of birth. A private christening might seem unlikely for a family of standing, and while Bro's birth was celebrated with a holiday on the family's Caribbean plantations, Elizabeth's was not.[7]
Elizabeth was the eldest of 12 children (eight boys and four girls). Eleven lived to adulthood; one daughter died at the age of 3, when Elizabeth was 8. The children all had nicknames: Elizabeth was Ba. She rode her pony, went for family walks and picnics, socialised with other county families, and participated in home theatrical productions. Unlike her siblings, she immersed herself in books as often as she could get away from the social rituals of her family.[citation needed]
In 1809, the family moved to Hope End, a 500-acre (200 ha) estate near the Malvern Hills in Ledbury, Herefordshire.[3] Her father converted the Georgian house into stables and built a mansion of opulent Turkish design, which his wife described as something from the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.[citation needed]
The interior's brass balustrades, mahogany doors inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and finely carved fireplaces were eventually complemented by lavish landscaping: ponds, grottos, kiosks, an ice house, a hothouse, and a subterranean passage from house to gardens.[9] Her time at Hope End inspired her in later life to write Aurora Leigh (1856), her most ambitious work, which went through more than 20 editions by 1900, but none from 1905 to 1978.[9]
She was educated at home and tutored by Daniel McSwiney with her oldest brother.[10] She began writing verses at the age of four.[11] During the Hope End period, she was an intensely studious, precocious child.[12] She claimed that she was reading novels at age 6, having been entranced by Pope's translations of Homer at age 8, studying Greek at age 10, and writing her own Homeric epic The Battle of Marathon: A Poem at age 11.[3]
In 1820, Mr Barrett privately published The Battle of Marathon, an epic-style poem, but all copies remained within the family.[11] Her mother compiled the child's poetry into collections of "Poems by Elizabeth B. Barrett". Her father called her the "Poet Laureate of Hope End" and encouraged her work. The result is one of the larger collections of juvenilia of any English writer. Mary Russell Mitford described the young Elizabeth at this time as having "a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on each side of a most expressive face; large, tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, and a smile like a sunbeam."[citation needed]
At about this time, Elizabeth began to battle an illness, which the medical science of the time was unable to diagnose.[3] All three sisters came down with the syndrome, but it lasted only with Elizabeth. She had intense head and spinal pain with loss of mobility. Various biographies link this to a riding accident at the time (she fell while trying to dismount a horse), but there is no evidence to support the link. Sent to recover at the Gloucester spa, she was treated – in the absence of symptoms supporting another diagnosis – for a spinal problem.[9] This illness continued for the rest of her life, and it is believed to be unrelated to the lung disease which she developed in 1837.[3]
She began to take opiates for the pain, laudanum (an opium concoction) followed by morphine, then commonly prescribed. She became dependent on them for much of her adulthood; the use from an early age may well have contributed to her frail health. Biographers such as Alethea Hayter have suggested this dependency have contributed to the wild vividness of her imagination and the poetry that it produced.[3][13]
By 1821, she had read Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and she become a passionate supporter of Wollstonecraft's political ideas.[3] The child's intellectual fascination with the classics and metaphysics was reflected in a religious intensity which she later described as "not the deep persuasion of the mild Christian but the wild visions of an enthusiast."[14] The Barretts attended services at the nearest Dissenting chapel, and Edward was active in Bible and missionary societies.
Elizabeth's mother died in 1828, and is buried at St Michael's Church, Ledbury, next to her daughter Mary. Sarah Graham-Clarke, Elizabeth's aunt, helped to care for the children, and she had clashes with Elizabeth's strong will. In 1831, Elizabeth's grandmother, Elizabeth Moulton, died. Following lawsuits and the abolition of slavery, Mr Barrett incurred great financial and investment losses that forced him to sell Hope End. Although the family was never poor, the place was seized and sold to satisfy creditors. Always secret in his financial dealings, he would not discuss his situation, and the family was haunted by the idea that they might have to move to Jamaica.[citation needed]
From 1833 to 1835, she was living with her family at Belle Vue in Sidmouth. The site has now been renamed Cedar Shade and redeveloped. A blue plaque at the entrance to the site attests to its previous existence. In 1838, some years after the sale of Hope End, the family settled at 50 Wimpole Street, Marylebone, London.[3]
During 1837–1838, the poet was struck with illness again, with symptoms today suggesting tuberculous ulceration of the lungs. The same year, at her physician's insistence, she moved from London to Torquay on the Devonshire coast. Her former home now forms part of the Regina Hotel. Two tragedies then struck. In February 1840, her brother Samuel died of a fever in Jamaica, then her favourite brother Edward (Bro) was drowned in a sailing accident in Torquay in July. These events had a serious effect on her already fragile health. She felt guilty as her father had disapproved of Edward's trip to Torquay. She wrote to Mitford: "That was a very near escape from madness, absolute hopeless madness".[3] The family returned to Wimpole Street in 1841.
Success
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At Wimpole Street, Elizabeth spent most of her time in her upstairs room. Her health began to improve, but she saw few people other than her immediate family.[3] One of those was John Kenyon, a wealthy friend and distant cousin of the family and patron of the arts. She received comfort from a spaniel named Flush, a gift from Mary Mitford.[15] (Virginia Woolf later fictionalised the life of the dog, making him the protagonist of her 1933 novel Flush: A Biography).
From 1841 to 1844, Elizabeth was prolific in poetry, translation, and prose. The poem The Cry of the Children, published in 1843 in Blackwood's, condemned child labour and helped bring about child-labour reforms by raising support for Lord Shaftesbury's Ten Hours Bill (1844).[3] About the same time, she contributed critical prose pieces to Richard Henry Horne's A New Spirit of the Age, including a laudatory essay on Thomas Carlyle.
In 1844, she published the two-volume Poems, which included "A Drama of Exile", "A Vision of Poets", and "Lady Geraldine's Courtship", and two substantial critical essays for 1842 issues of The Athenaeum. A self-proclaimed "adorer of Carlyle", she sent a copy to him as "a tribute of admiration & respect", which began a correspondence between them.[16][17] "Since she was not burdened with any domestic duties expected of her sisters, Barrett Browning could now devote herself entirely to the life of the mind, cultivating an enormous correspondence, reading widely".[18] Her prolific output made her a rival to Tennyson as a candidate for poet laureate in 1850 on the death of Wordsworth.[3]
A Royal Society of Arts blue plaque now commemorates Elizabeth at 50 Wimpole Street.[19]
Robert Browning and Italy
[edit]
Her 1844 volume Poems made her one of the more popular writers in the country and inspired Robert Browning to write to her. He wrote "I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett," praising their "fresh strange music, the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave thought."[3]
Kenyon arranged for Browning to meet Elizabeth on 20 May 1845, in her rooms, and so began one of the most famous courtships in literature. Elizabeth had produced a large amount of work, but Browning had a great influence on her subsequent writing as did she on his: Two of Barrett's most famous pieces were written after she met Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese[20] and Aurora Leigh. Robert's Men and Women is also a product of that time.
Some critics state that her activity was, in some ways, in decay before she met Browning: "Until her relationship with Robert Browning began in 1845, Barrett's willingness to engage in public discourse about social issues and about aesthetic issues in poetry, which had been so strong in her youth, gradually diminished, as did her physical health. As an intellectual presence and a physical being, she was becoming a shadow of herself."[18]
The courtship and marriage between Robert Browning and Elizabeth were made secretly as she knew her father would disapprove. After a private marriage at St Marylebone Parish Church, they honeymooned in Paris and then moved to Italy in September 1846, which became their home almost continuously until her death. Elizabeth's loyal lady's maid Elizabeth Wilson witnessed the marriage and accompanied the couple to Italy.[3]
Mr Barrett disinherited Elizabeth as he did each of his children who married. Elizabeth had foreseen her father's anger but had not anticipated her brothers' rejection.[3] As Elizabeth had some money of her own, the couple were reasonably comfortable in Italy. The Brownings were well respected and even famous. Elizabeth grew stronger, and in 1849, at the age of 43, between four miscarriages, she gave birth to a son, Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning, whom they called Pen. Their son later married, but had no legitimate children.[citation needed]
At her husband's insistence, Elizabeth's second edition of Poems included her love sonnets; as a result, her popularity increased (as did critical regard), and her artistic position was confirmed. During the years of her marriage, her literary reputation far surpassed that of her poet-husband; when visitors came to their home in Florence, she was invariably the greater attraction.[21]
The couple came to know a wide circle of artists and writers, including William Makepeace Thackeray, sculptor Harriet Hosmer (who, she wrote, seemed to be the "perfectly emancipated female") and Harriet Beecher Stowe. In 1849, she met Margaret Fuller; Carlyle in 1851; French novelist George Sand in 1852, whom she had long admired. Among her intimate friends in Florence was the writer Isa Blagden, whom she encouraged to write novels.[22] They met Alfred Tennyson in Paris, and John Forster, Samuel Rogers and the Carlyles in London, later befriending Charles Kingsley and John Ruskin.[3]
Decline and death
[edit]
After the death of an old friend, G. B. Hunter, and then of her father, Barrett Browning's health started to deteriorate. The Brownings moved from Florence to Siena, residing at the Villa Alberti. Engrossed in Italian politics, she issued a small volume of political poems titled Poems before Congress (1860) "most of which were written to express her sympathy with the Italian cause after the outbreak of fighting in 1859".[23] They caused a furore in Britain, and the conservative magazines Blackwood's and the Saturday Review labelled her a fanatic.[citation needed] She dedicated this book to her husband. Her last work was A Musical Instrument, published posthumously.
Barrett Browning's sister Henrietta died in November 1860. The couple spent the winter of 1860–1861 in Rome where Barrett Browning's health deteriorated, and they returned to Florence in early June 1861.[3] She became gradually weaker, using morphine to ease her pain. She died on 29 June 1861 in her husband's arms. Browning said that she died "smilingly, happily, and with a face like a girl's...Her last word was...'Beautiful' ".[3] She was buried in the Protestant English Cemetery of Florence.[24] "On Monday July 1 the shops in the area around Casa Guidi were closed, while Elizabeth was mourned with unusual demonstrations."[12] The nature of her illness is still unclear. Some modern scientists speculate her illness may have been hypokalemic periodic paralysis, a genetic disorder that causes weakness and many of the other symptoms she described.[25]
Publications
[edit]
Barrett Browning's first known poem "On the Cruelty of Forcement to Man" was written at the age of 6 or 8.[26] The manuscript, which protests against impressment, is currently in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library; the exact date is controversial because the "2" in the date 1812 is written over something else that is scratched out.[23]
Her first independent publication was "Stanzas Excited by Reflections on the Present State of Greece" in The New Monthly Magazine of May 1821;[3] followed two months later by "Thoughts Awakened by Contemplating a Piece of the Palm which Grows on the Summit of the Acropolis at Athens".[23]
Her first collection of poems, An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems, was published in 1826 and reflected her passion for Byron and Greek politics.[23] Its publication drew the attention of Hugh Stuart Boyd, a blind scholar of the Greek language, and of Uvedale Price, another Greek scholar, with whom she maintained sustained correspondence.[3] Among other neighbours was Mrs James Martin from Colwall, with whom she corresponded throughout her life. Later, at Boyd's suggestion, she translated Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound (published in 1833; retranslated in 1850). During their friendship, Barrett studied Greek literature, including Homer, Pindar and Aristophanes.[3]
Elizabeth opposed slavery and published two poems highlighting the barbarity of the institution and her support for the abolitionist cause: "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point" and "A Curse for a Nation". The first depicts an enslaved woman whipped, raped, and made pregnant cursing her enslavers.[3] Elizabeth declared herself glad that the slaves were "virtually free" when the Slavery Abolition Act passed in the British Parliament despite the fact that her father believed that abolition would ruin his business.[citation needed]
The date of publication of these poems is in dispute, but her position on slavery in the poems is clear and may have led to a rift between Elizabeth and her father. She wrote to John Ruskin in 1855 "I belong to a family of West Indian slaveholders, and if I believed in curses, I should be afraid". Her father and uncle were unaffected by the Baptist War (1831–1832) and continued to own slaves until passage of the Slavery Abolition Act.[3]
In London, John Kenyon introduced Elizabeth to literary figures including William Wordsworth, Mary Russell Mitford, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred Tennyson and Thomas Carlyle. Elizabeth continued to write, contributing "The Romaunt of Margaret", "The Romaunt of the Page", "The Poet's Vow" and other pieces to various periodicals. She corresponded with other writers, including Mary Russell Mitford, who became a close friend and who supported Elizabeth's literary ambitions.[3]
In 1838 The Seraphim and Other Poems appeared, the first volume of Elizabeth's mature poetry to appear under her own name.
Sonnets from the Portuguese was published in 1850. There is debate about the origin of the title. Some say it refers to the series of sonnets of the 16th-century Portuguese poet Luís de Camões. However, "my little Portuguese" was a pet name that Browning had adopted for Elizabeth and this may have some connection.[27]
The verse-novel Aurora Leigh, her most ambitious and perhaps the most popular of her longer poems, appeared in 1856. It is the story of a female writer making her way in life, balancing work and love, and based on Elizabeth's own experiences. Aurora Leigh was an important influence on Susan B. Anthony's thinking about the traditional roles of women, with regard to marriage versus independent individuality.[28] The North American Review praised Elizabeth's poem: "Mrs. Browning's poems are, in all respects, the utterance of a woman — of a woman of great learning, rich experience, and powerful genius, uniting to her woman's nature the strength which is sometimes thought peculiar to a man."[29]
Spiritual influence
[edit]Much of Barrett Browning's work carries a religious theme. She had read and studied such works as Milton's Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno. She says in her writing, "We want the sense of the saturation of Christ's blood upon the souls of our poets, that it may cry through them in answer to the ceaseless wail of the Sphinx of our humanity, expounding agony into renovation. Something of this has been perceived in art when its glory was at the fullest. Something of a yearning after this may be seen among the Greek Christian poets, something which would have been much with a stronger faculty".[30] She believed that "Christ's religion is essentially poetry – poetry glorified". She explored the religious aspect in many of her poems, especially in her early work, such as the sonnets.
She was interested in theological debate, had learned Hebrew and read the Hebrew Bible.[31] Her seminal Aurora Leigh, for example, features religious imagery and allusion to the apocalypse. The critic Cynthia Scheinberg notes that female characters in Aurora Leigh and her earlier work "The Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus" allude to Miriam, sister and caregiver to Moses.[32] These allusions to Miriam in both poems mirror the way in which Barrett Browning herself drew from Jewish history, while distancing herself from it, in order to maintain the cultural norms of a Christian woman poet of the Victorian Age.[32]
In the correspondence Barrett Browning kept with the Reverend William Merry from 1843 to 1844 on predestination and salvation by works, she identifies herself as a Congregationalist: "I am not a Baptist — but a Congregational Christian, — in the holding of my private opinions."[33]
Barrett Browning Institute
[edit]In 1892, Ledbury, Herefordshire, held a design competition to build an Institute in honour of Barrett Browning. Brightwen Binyon beat 44 other designs. It was based on the timber-framed Market House, which was opposite the site, and was completed in 1896. However, Nikolaus Pevsner was not impressed by its style. It was used as a public library from 1938 to 2021,[34] when new library facilities were provided for the town, and is now the headquarters of the Ledbury Poetry Festival.[35] It has been Grade II-listed since 2007.[36]
Critical reception
[edit]Sonnet XLIII
from Sonnets from the Portuguese, 1845 (published 1850)[37]
Barrett Browning was widely popular in the United Kingdom and the United States during her lifetime.[20] Edgar Allan Poe was inspired by her poem Lady Geraldine's Courtship and specifically borrowed the poem's metre for his poem The Raven.[38] Poe had reviewed Barrett Browning's work in the January 1845 issue of the Broadway Journal, writing that "her poetic inspiration is the highest – we can conceive of nothing more august. Her sense of Art is pure in itself."[39] In return, she praised The Raven, and Poe dedicated his 1845 collection The Raven and Other Poems to her, referring to her as "the noblest of her sex".[40]
Barrett Browning's poetry greatly influenced Emily Dickinson, who admired her as a woman of achievement. Her popularity in the United States and Britain was advanced by her stands against social injustice, including slavery in the United States, injustice toward Italians from their foreign rulers, and child labour.[3]
Lilian Whiting published a biography of Barrett Browning (1899) which describes her as "the most philosophical poet" and depicts her life as "a Gospel of applied Christianity". To Whiting, the term "art for art's sake" did not apply to Barrett Browning's work, as each poem, distinctively purposeful, was borne of a more "honest vision". In this critical analysis, Whiting portrays Barrett Browning as a poet who uses knowledge of Classical literature with an "intuitive gift of spiritual divination".[41] In Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Angela Leighton suggests that the portrayal of Barrett Browning as the "pious iconography of womanhood" has distracted us from her poetic achievements. Leighton cites the 1931 play by Rudolf Besier The Barretts of Wimpole Street as evidence that 20th-century literary criticism of Barrett Browning's work has suffered more as a result of her popularity than poetic ineptitude.[42] The play was popularized by actress Katharine Cornell, for whom it became a signature role. It was an enormous success, both artistically and commercially, and was revived several times and adapted twice into movies. Sampson, however, considers the play to have been the most damaging cause of false myths about Elizabeth, and particularly the relationship with her, allegedly 'tyrannical', father.[43]
Throughout the 20th century, literary criticism of Barrett Browning's poetry remained sparse until her poems were discovered by the women's movement. She once described herself as being inclined to reject several women's rights principles, suggesting in letters to Mary Russell Mitford and her husband that she believed that there was an inferiority of intellect in women. In Aurora Leigh, however, she created a strong and independent woman who embraces both work and love. Leighton writes that because Elizabeth participates in the literary world, where voice and diction are dominated by perceived masculine superiority, she "is defined only in mysterious opposition to everything that distinguishes the male subject who writes..."[42] A five-volume scholarly edition of her works was published in 2010, the first in over a century.[23]
Works (collections)
[edit]- 1820: The Battle of Marathon: A Poem. Privately printed
- 1826: An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems. London: James Duncan
- 1833: Prometheus Bound, Translated from the Greek of Aeschylus, and Miscellaneous Poems. London: A.J. Valpy
- 1838: The Seraphim, and Other Poems. London: Saunders and Otley
- 1844: Poems (UK) / A Drama of Exile, and other Poems (US). London: Edward Moxon. New York: Henry G. Langley
- 1850: Poems ("New Edition", 2 vols.) Revision of 1844 edition adding Sonnets from the Portuguese and others. London: Chapman & Hall
- 1851: Casa Guidi Windows. London: Chapman & Hall
- 1853: Poems (3d ed.). London: Chapman & Hall
- 1854: Two Poems: "A Plea for the Ragged Schools of London" (by Elizabeth Barrett Browning) and "The Twins" (by Robert Browning). London: Chapman & Hall
- 1856: Poems (4th ed.). London: Chapman & Hall
- 1856: Aurora Leigh. London: Chapman & Hall
- 1860: Poems Before Congress. London: Chapman & Hall
- 1862: Last Poems. London: Chapman & Hall
Posthumous publications
[edit]- 1863: The Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets. London: Chapman & Hall
- 1877: The Earlier Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1826–1833, ed. Richard Herne Shepherd. London: Bartholomew Robson
- 1877: Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Addressed to Richard Hengist Horne, with comments on contemporaries, 2 vols., ed. S.R.T. Mayer. London: Richard Bentley & Son
- 1897: Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 2 vols., ed. Frederic G. Kenyon. London:Smith, Elder,& Co.
- 1899: Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett 1845–1846, 2 vol., ed Robert W. Barrett Browning. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
- 1914: New Poems by Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ed. Frederic G Kenyon. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
- 1929: Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Letters to Her Sister, 1846–1859, ed. Leonard Huxley. London: John Murray
- 1935: Twenty-Two Unpublished Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning to Henrietta and Arabella Moulton Barrett. New York: United Feature Syndicate
- 1939: Letters from Elizabeth Barrett to B.R. Haydon, ed. Martha Hale Shackford. New York: Oxford University Press
- 1954: Elizabeth Barrett to Miss Mitford, ed. Betty Miller. London: John Murray
- 1955: Unpublished Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Hugh Stuart Boyd, ed. Barbara P. McCarthy. New Heaven, Conn.: Yale University Press
- 1958: Letters of the Brownings to George Barrett, ed. Paul Landis with Ronald E. Freeman. Urbana: University of Illinois Press
- 1974: Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Letters to Mrs. David Ogilvy, 1849–1861, ed. P. Heydon and P. Kelley. New York: Quadrangle, New York Times Book Co., and Browning Institute
- 1984: The Brownings' Correspondence, ed. Phillip Kelley, Ronald Hudson, and Scott Lewis. Winfield, Kansas: Wedgestone Press
Notes
[edit]- ^ Exact date of birth may not be correct. See Early life for more information.
References
[edit]- ^ a b "Elizabeth Barrett Browning". Academy of American Poets. Retrieved 25 May 2018.
- ^ "Robert Wiedeman Barrett (Pen) Browning (1849–1912)". Armstrong Browning Library and Museum, Baylor University. Retrieved 25 May 2018.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab Marjorie Stone, "Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1806–1861)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, October 2008.
- ^ Hunt, Alan (8 October 2001). "Browning Database To Be Launched During Library's Jubilee". Baylor University. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
- ^ "Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett". Legacies of British Slavery Database. Retrieved 1 October 2024.
- ^ "John Graham Clarke". Legacies of British Slavery Database. Retrieved 1 October 2024.
- ^ a b Sampson, Fiona (2021). Two Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Profile Books, p 33
- ^ Taplin, Gardner B. "Elizabeth Barrett Browning." Victorian Poets Before 1850. Ed. William E. Fredeman and Ira Bruce Nadel. Detroit: Gale Research, 1984. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 32. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 December 2014.
- ^ a b c Taylor, Beverly. "Elizabeth Barrett Browning." Victorian Women Poets. Ed. William B. Thesing. Detroit: Gale Research, 1999. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 199. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 December 2014.
- ^ Dorothy Mermin (1989), Elizabeth Barrett Browning: The Origins of a New Poetry, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 978-0226520391, pp. 19–20.
- ^ a b "Browning, Elizabeth Barrett: Introduction." Jessica Bomarito and Jeffrey W. Hunter (eds). Feminism in Literature: A Gale Critical Companion. Vol. 2: 19th Century, Topics & Authors (A-B). Detroit: Gale, 2005. 467–469. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 7 December 2014.
- ^ a b Taplin, Gardner B. The Life of Elizabeth Browning New Haven: Yale University Press (1957).
- ^ Hayter, Alethea (1962). Mrs. Browning: A Poet's Work and Its Setting. Faber and Faber, pp. 61–66.
- ^ Everett, Glenn (2002). Life of Elizabeth Browning.
- ^ Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Mary Rose Sullivan; Mary Russell Mitford; Meredith B. Raymond (1983). The letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 1836–1854. Armstrong Browning Library of Baylor University. ISBN 978-0-911459-00-5. Retrieved 22 October 2011.
- ^ Raymond, Meredith B.; Sullivan, Mary Rose, eds. (1983). The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford 1836–1854. Vol. 1. Waco, Tex.: Armstrong Browning Library. p. 378.
- ^ Raymond, Meredith B.; Sullivan, Mary Rose, eds. (1983). The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 1836–1854. Vol. 2. Waco, Tex.: Armstrong Browning Library. p. 438.
- ^ a b Mary Sanders Pollock (2003). Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning: a creative partnership. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN 978-0-7546-3328-0. Retrieved 22 October 2011.
- ^ "Barrett, Elizabeth Barrett (1806–1861)". English Heritage. Retrieved 23 October 2012.
- ^ a b Elizabeth Barrett Browning (15 August 1986). Sonnets from the Portuguese: A Celebration of Love. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-74501-1.
- ^ Foundation, Poetry (25 May 2023). "Elizabeth Barrett Browning". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 25 May 2023.
- ^ "Isa Blagden", in: The Brownings' Correspondence. Retrieved 13 May 2015. Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b c d e Elizabeth Barrett Browning (2010). "The" works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Pickering & Chatto. ISBN 978-1-85196-900-5.
- ^ "Poetsgraves.co.uk".
- ^ Buchanan, A; Weiss, EB (Autumn 2011). "Of sad and wished-for years: Elizabeth Barrett Browning's lifelong illness". Perspect Biol Med. 54 (4): 479–503. doi:10.1353/pbm.2011.0040. PMID 22019536. S2CID 32949896.
- ^ Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (30 July 2009). "On the Cruelty of Forcement to Man Alluding to the Press Gang". Elizbeth Barrett Browning Selected Poems. ISBN 9781770481237.
- ^ Wall, Jennifer Kingma. "Love and Marriage: How Biographical Interpretation affected the Reception of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese" (1850)". The Victorian Web. Retrieved 2 January 2015.
the title was actually a reference to a term of endearment Robert had for Elizabeth, my little Portuguese, a reference to her dark complexion
- ^ Alma Lutz (1959). Susan B. Anthony Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian. Boston, Beacon Press.
- ^ Elizabeth Barrett Browning (2001). Aurora Leigh, and other poems. Women's Press. ISBN 978-0-7043-3820-3.
- ^ "Biog". Victorianweb.org. 18 July 2005. Retrieved 18 October 2010.
- ^ Linda M. Lewis (January 1998). Elizabeth Barrett Browning's spiritual progress: face to face with God. University of Missouri Press. ISBN 978-0-8262-1146-0. Retrieved 22 October 2011.
- ^ a b Galchinsky, Michael (1 January 2003). "Women's Poetry and Religion in Victorian England: Jewish Identity and Christian Culture (review)". Victorian Studies. 45 (3): 551–553. doi:10.1353/vic.2003.0122. ISSN 1527-2052. S2CID 201755414.
- ^ Wörn, Alexandra M. B (2004). ""Poetry is Where God is": The Importance of Christian Faith and Theology in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Life and Work". Victorian Religious Discourse. pp. 235–252. doi:10.1057/9781403980892_11. ISBN 978-1-349-52882-0.
- ^ "Barrett Browning Institute". victoriacountyhistory.ac.uk. 23 April 2005. Retrieved 22 September 2014.
- ^ Garner, Chloe. "Ledbury Poetry Festival moves into The Barret (sic) Browning Institute". poetry-festival.co.uk. Archived from the original on 11 February 2021. Retrieved 3 November 2021.
- ^ "Barrett Browning Institute, Ledbury". britishlistedbuildings.co.uk. Retrieved 22 September 2014.
- ^ "How Do I Love Thee?" Archived 17 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Poet.org
- ^ Dawn B. Sova (2001). Edgar Allan Poe, A-Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. Checkmark Books. ISBN 978-0-8160-4161-9.
- ^ Jeffrey Meyers (5 September 2000). Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. Cooper Square Press. p. 160. ISBN 978-0-8154-1038-6.
- ^ Dwight Thomas; David Kelly Jackson (1 September 1995). Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849. G K Hall. p. 591. ISBN 978-0-7838-1401-8.
- ^ Whiting, Lilian. A study of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Little, Brown and Company (1899)
- ^ a b Angela Leighton (1986). Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Indiana University Press. pp. 8–18. ISBN 978-0-253-25451-1. Retrieved 22 October 2011.
- ^ Sampson, Fiona (2021). Two Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Profile Books, pp 4–5
Further reading
[edit]- Barrett, Robert Assheton. The Barretts of Jamaica – The family of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1927). Armstrong Browning Library of Baylor University, Browning Society, Wedgestone Press in Winfield, Kan, 2000.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning. "Aurora Leigh and Other Poems", eds. John Robert Glorney Bolton and Julia Bolton Holloway. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995.
- Donaldson, Sandra, et al., eds. The Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 5 vols. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2010.
- The Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, eds. Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1900.
- Creston, Dormer. Andromeda in Wimpole Street: The Romance of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1929.
- Everett, Glenn. Life of Elizabeth Browning. The Victorian Web 2002.
- Forster, Margaret. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. New York: Random House, Vintage Classics, 2004.
- Hayter, Alethea. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (published for the British Council and the National Book League). London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1965.
- Kaplan, Cora. Aurora Leigh and Other Poems. London: The Women's Press Limited, 1978.
- Kelley, Philip et al. (Eds.) The Brownings' Correspondence. 29 vols. to date. (Wedgestone, 1984–) (Complete letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning, so far to 1861. This edition is now complete for Elizabeth.)
- Leighton, Angela. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1986.
- Lewis, Linda. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Spiritual Progress. Missouri: Missouri University Press. 1997.
- Mander, Rosalie. Mrs Browning: The Story of Elizabeth Barrett. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980.
- Marks, Jeannette. The Family of the Barrett: A Colonial Romance. London: Macmillan, 1938.
- Markus, Julia. Dared and Done: Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. Ohio University Press, 1995.
- Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York City: Cooper Square Press, 1992: 160.
- Peterson, William S. Sonnets from the Portuguese. Massachusetts: Barre Publishing, 1977.
- Pollock, Mary Sanders. Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning: A Creative Partnership. England: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2003.
- Richardson, Joanna. The Brownings: A Biography Compiled from Contemporary Sources. Folio Society, 1986.
- Sampson, Fiona. Two Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Profile Books, 2021.
- Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. New York City: Checkmark Books, 2001.
- Stephenson Glennis. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the Poetry of Love. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1989.
- Taplin, Gardner B. The Life of Elizabeth Browning. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957.
- Thomas, Dwight and David K. Jackson. The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849. New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1987: 591.
External links
[edit]
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Texts from Wikisource
Data from Wikidata
- Digital collections
- Works by Elizabeth Barrett Browning in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
- Works by Elizabeth Barrett Browning at Project Gutenberg
- Works by Elizabeth Barrett Browning at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Works by or about Elizabeth Barrett Browning at the Internet Archive
- Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning at Online Books Page
- Selected poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- Physical collections
- "Archival material relating to Elizabeth Barrett Browning". UK National Archives.
- Browning Family Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin
- Digitized Browning love letters at Baylor University
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning Archived 15 May 2017 at the Wayback Machine at the British Library
- Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
- Other resources
- Profile of Elizabeth Barrett Browning at PoetryFoundation.org
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning profile and poems at Poets.org
- The Brownings: A Research Guide (Baylor University)
- [1] www.florin.ms, website on Florence's 'English' Cemetery, with Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb by Frederick, Lord Leighton.
- Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning at English Poetry
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Born on March 6, 1806, at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, England, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an English poet of the Romantic Movement. The oldest of twelve children, Elizabeth was the first in her family born in England in over two hundred years. For centuries, the Barrett family, who were part Creole, had lived in Jamaica, where they owned sugar plantations and relied on the forced labor of enslaved individuals. Elizabeth’s father, Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett, chose to raise his family in England, while his fortune grew in Jamaica. Educated at home, Elizabeth apparently had read passages from John Milton’s Paradise Lost and a number of Shakespearean plays, among other great works, before the age of ten. By her twelfth year, she had written her first “epic” poem, which consisted of four books of rhyming couplets. Two years later, Elizabeth developed a lung ailment that plagued her for the rest of her life. Doctors began treating her with morphine, which she would take until her death. While saddling a pony when she was fifteen, Elizabeth also suffered a spinal injury. Despite her ailments, her education continued to flourish. Throughout her teenage years, Elizabeth taught herself Hebrew so that she could read the Old Testament; her interests later turned to Greek studies. Accompanying her appetite for the classics was a passionate enthusiasm for her Christian faith. She became active in the Bible and Missionary Societies of her church.
In 1826, Elizabeth anonymously published her collection An Essay on Mind and Other Poems. Two years later, her mother passed away. The slow abolition of slavery in England and mismanagement of the plantations depleted the Barretts’ income, and in 1832, Elizabeth’s father sold his rural estate at a public auction. He moved his family to a coastal town and rented cottages for the next three years, before settling permanently in London. While living on the sea coast, Elizabeth published her translation of Prometheus Bound (1833), by the Greek dramatist Aeschylus.
Gaining attention for her work in the 1830s, Elizabeth continued to live in her father’s London house under his tyrannical rule. He began sending Elizabeth’s younger siblings to Jamaica to help with the family’s estates. Elizabeth bitterly opposed slavery and did not want her siblings sent away. During this time, she wrote The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838), expressing Christian sentiments in the form of classical Greek tragedy. Due to her weakening disposition, she was forced to spend a year at the sea of Torquay accompanied by her brother Edward, whom she referred to as “Bro.” He drowned later that year while sailing at Torquay, and Browning returned home emotionally broken, becoming an invalid and a recluse. She spent the next five years in her bedroom at her father’s home. She continued writing, however, and in 1844 produced a collection entitled simply Poems. This volume gained the attention of poet Robert Browning, whose work Elizabeth had praised in one of her poems, and he wrote her a letter.
Elizabeth and Robert, who was six years her junior, exchanged 574 letters over the next twenty months. Immortalized in 1930 in the play The Barretts of Wimpole Street, by Rudolf Besier (1878–1942), their romance was bitterly opposed by her father, who did not want any of his children to marry. In 1846, the couple eloped and settled in Florence, Italy, where Elizabeth’s health improved and she bore a son, Robert Wideman Browning. Her father never spoke to her again. Elizabeth’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, dedicated to her husband and written in secret before her marriage, was published in 1850. Critics generally consider the Sonnets—one of the most widely known collections of love lyrics in English—to be her best work. Admirers have compared her imagery to Shakespeare and her use of the Italian form to Petrarch.
Political and social themes embody Elizabeth’s later work. She expressed her intense sympathy for the struggle for the unification of Italy in Casa Guidi Windows (1848–51) and Poems Before Congress (1860). In 1857 Browning published her verse novel Aurora Leigh, which portrays male domination of a woman. In her poetry she also addressed the oppression of the Italians by the Austrians, the child labor mines and mills of England, and slavery, among other social injustices. Although this decreased her popularity, Elizabeth was heard and recognized around Europe.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning died in Florence on June 29, 1861.
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