Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most popular British poets of the Victorian era--she was considered to succeed William Wordsworth as Poet Laureate, certainly a rarity for a woman in that day. She is best known for her Sonnets from the Portuguese, love poems written secretly during her courtship by Robert Browning, with whom she eloped to Italy at the age of 40. But her work actually extends far beyond the range of lyric sonnetry -- she wrote poems commenting on political and social issues, championing freedom, protesting oppression, and an epic verse novel, Aurora Leigh, addressing men’s domination of women.
Elizabeth Barrett’s Childhood and Education: Elizabeth Barrett was born in 1806 at Coxhoe Hall in Durham, England, the eldest of 12 children of Edward Moulton Barrett, whose family had for generations owned slave-worked sugar plantations in Jamaica. He used his wealth to buy the estate and raise his family in England. Elizabeth had a privileged childhood and was educated at home, an education that was particularly broad for a girl, because she sat in on lessons with her brother’s tutor. She read the works of Milton and Shakespeare, the classic Greek and Latin authors in their original languages, Dante in Italian and the Old Testament in Hebrew.
Early Publication and Illness: At the age of 12 Elizabeth completed her first “epic” poem, four books of rhyming couplets. When she was 14, her father underwrote her first publication, a Homeric poem entitled The Battle of Marathon. Not long after, she became ill with a lung condition that is still the object of speculation (it may have been tuberculosis) and that continued for the rest of her life. She also had some kind of spinal injury in her teens, when she began her lifelong dependence on opium. Her first collection of poems, An Essay on Mind and Other Poems, was published anonymously in 1826, when she was 20.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Her Father and Slavery: Elizabeth Barrett opposed the institution of slavery, although her family’s wealth was built on it. Her father was a tyrant, who disowned any of his children who married without his permission, and always refused permission. She lived most of her life under his thumb, but she also opposed his plans to send her younger brothers back to Jamaica to manage the plantations after financial reversals partly occasioned by the phasing out of slavery in Britain. After she left her father’s house, her poetry became a powerful voice advocating liberation for the oppressed.
Life and Death by the Sea: Elizabeth Barrett’s poetic reputation grew with the publication of The Seraphim and Other Poems in 1838, but at the same time her health was deteriorating, and under doctor’s orders she went with her brother Edward to live by the sea at Torquay. He died that year in a sailing accident there. His death was a severe blow, one for which Elizabeth may have blamed herself (because Edward would never have gone to Torquay except to accompany her), and it turned her into an emotionally wounded invalid.
Robert Browning and Sonnets from the Portuguese: In 1844, Elizabeth Barrett published another book, simply titled Poems. Robert Browning wrote a letter telling her how much he admired her poems and therefore her self... and thus began one of the great literary romances. Over the next two years, they carried on a courtship by letter, and Elizabeth poured her insights and feelings about love and marriage into a series of secretly written sonnets. Later, at Robert’s insistence, they were published in the 2nd edition of Poems. Because of the slight admixture of Creole in her ethnic heritage, Robert called her “my little Portuguese” -- hence, Sonnets from the Portuguese.
The Brownings in Florence: In 1846, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning were married in secret and went to live in Italy, where her health and her strength greatly improved. She was disinherited, of course, by her father, but it seems clear that the move to Southern Europe extended and enhanced her life. It was a happy marriage: In Florence the Brownings established themselves in literary society, had a son, and both continued writing very productively until her death in 1861.
