Guess the Author

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

1806–1861 · 19th century

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) was one of the most famous poets of Victorian England, more celebrated in her lifetime than her husband Robert Browning. Author of Sonnets from the Portuguese, the verse novel Aurora Leigh and poems against slavery and child labour, she was considered for the post of Poet Laureate in 1850.

Born

1806

Died

1861

Century

19th century

Genres

poetry

Works

Sonnets from the Portuguese, Aurora Leigh

Contents

Hope End The poet of Wimpole Street Florence Anecdotes Frequently asked questions

Hope End

Elizabeth Barrett was born in 1806 in County Durham, the eldest of twelve children of a wealthy family whose fortune came from sugar plantations in Jamaica. She grew up at Hope End, an estate in Herefordshire, read Homer in Greek as a child and published an epic poem at fourteen, printed by her father.

In her teens she fell ill with a mysterious illness that left her an invalid for much of her life. After financial losses, the family moved to London, to 50 Wimpole Street. The death by drowning of her favourite brother Edward in 1840 plunged her into deep grief.

The poet of Wimpole Street

Confined to her room, she wrote and corresponded widely. Her Poems of 1844 made her famous; The Cry of the Children denounced the employment of children in mines and factories. Among her admirers was the young poet Robert Browning, who wrote to her in January 1845.

After hundreds of letters and many secret visits, they married in September 1846 without the knowledge of her tyrannical father, who had forbidden all his children to marry, and left for Italy. He never forgave her and disinherited her.

Florence

The Brownings settled in Florence, in an apartment called Casa Guidi. Her health improved, and in 1849, at forty-three, she gave birth to a son, Robert, nicknamed Pen. In 1850 she published Sonnets from the Portuguese, the love sonnets she had written during their courtship.

Passionate about Italian independence, she wrote Casa Guidi Windows and Poems before Congress. Her verse novel Aurora Leigh (1856), about a woman poet, was a great success. She died in her husband's arms in Florence in June 1861 and is buried in the English Cemetery there.

Anecdotes

A Portuguese disguise

The title Sonnets from the Portuguese was chosen to hide the personal nature of the poems, as if they were translations. Robert Browning's pet name for his wife was my little Portuguese, after her love of the poems of the Portuguese poet Camões.

Flush

Elizabeth's cocker spaniel, Flush, was kidnapped three times by London dog thieves and ransomed. He went with her to Italy. Virginia Woolf wrote a playful biography of the dog, Flush, in 1933.