Early Life
Elizabeth Barrett, born in 1806 at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, England, was the oldest of twelve siblings and the “first in her family born in England in over two hundred years.” She grew up having everything that a child could possibly want and by the age of ten she was reading many Shakespearean plays and a few passages from Paradise Lost. At age twelve, she had written four books of rhyming couplets which was considered her first “epic” poem. Two years later, she developed a lung ailment which she suffered from for the rest of her life and was treated with morphine. A year later, she suffered a spinal injury as she saddled a pony. During this time in her life, many of her poems were dark, saddening, and filled with her own grief. Despite her ailments, her education continued to thrive and Elizabeth taught herself Hebrew so she would be able to read the Old Testament. She was passionate about her Christian faith and it translated into the amount of activity she did in the Bible and Missionary Societies of her church. In 1826, when Elizabeth was 20 years of age, she published her first volume. It was titled An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems and she claimed no authorship of the novel. Her mother died two years later. Shortly after publication, she became acquaintances with a completely blind, middle- aged scholar named Hugh Stuart Boyd. He had published various volumes of translations from the Greek patristic writings. Her friendship with Hugh sparked her interest for classical Greek literature including: Homer, Pindar, passages from Plato and Aristotle. The Greek literature influenced her writing style greatly- she published her translation of Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, the Greek dramatist, in 1833 after the move her father made due to the loss of his rural estate in London. During this time in her life, Elizabeth and her siblings were sent to Jamaica to help with the family’s estates. She wrote The Seraphim and Other Poems in 1838 which expressed “Christian sentiments in the form of classical Greek tragedy”. Due to her declining health, she was forced to spend a year at the sea of Torquay with “Bro” her brother Edward who died July 11, 1840 and “was the greatest sorrow of her life.” She carried this burden for the rest of her life, unable to speak of it to her family or anyone else. She remained in her room for the following five years and continued to write. She read various poems from Browning, Tennyson, Carlyle, Harriet, and Wordsworth who became her inspiration. She was the only one in her family who was independently wealthy, which, during that time, was most uncommon. And due to her declining health, she did not do domestic work that was supposed to fall to her because of her mother’s untimely death.
Marrige
Despite her declining health, her writing continued to thrive and in 1844 she published a collection entitled Poems. The collection gained the attention of Robert Browning, a poet whom Elizabeth had previously praised in a poem in one of her volumes titled “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.” In response to the poem, Robert sent a letter of gratitude in 1845 to Elizabeth. Elizabeth and Robert began to send letters back and forth, much to the displeasure of Elizabeth’s father. She fell in love with Robert and many of her poems reflect this time, her most notable being “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” Robert and Elizabeth were married on September 12 of 1846 and the two quickly left England and went to Italy. Three years later, they had their first and only son, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, nicknamed "Pen," was born. Elizabeth continued writing and in 1850 updated her previous volume Poems at the encouragement of her husband. Due to the Brownings not wanting the poems to seem as if they had any biographical significance, they selected the title “Sonnets from the Portuguese” to make it seem as if the poems were translations. Later in her life, Elizabeth wrote a narrative poem as a way to explain and interpret her feelings on the society of that time.
Works Cited:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/elizabeth-barrett-browning
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/152
http://www3.amherst.edu/~rjyanco94/literature/elizabethbarrettbrowning/poems/son
netsfromtheportuguese/howdoilovetheeletmecounttheways.html
Pictures from:
http://nzr.mvnu.edu/faculty/trearick/english/rearick/readings/authors/specific/browni
ng_elizabeth.htm
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_W2xw9qceZic/S3Rs2GAhnvI/AAAAAAAAAg0/IxyC8pJWiBk/s1
600-h/Elizabeth+Barrett.jpg
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/elizabeth-barrett-browning
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/152
http://www3.amherst.edu/~rjyanco94/literature/elizabethbarrettbrowning/poems/son
netsfromtheportuguese/howdoilovetheeletmecounttheways.html
Pictures from:
http://nzr.mvnu.edu/faculty/trearick/english/rearick/readings/authors/specific/browni
ng_elizabeth.htm
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_W2xw9qceZic/S3Rs2GAhnvI/AAAAAAAAAg0/IxyC8pJWiBk/s1
600-h/Elizabeth+Barrett.jpg