Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Julia Wedgwood
JW , in her early thirties, launched what became a flirtatious as well as a literary exchange with Browning, who was in his fifties and whose wife Elizabeth had died several years before. Scholars have...
Family and Intimate relationships Alice Meynell
After a meeting in 1882, Robert Browning noted a familial link between the Thompsons and the Barretts .
Meynell, Viola. Alice Meynell: A Memoir. J. Cape, 1947.
7n
Family and Intimate relationships Isa Blagden
It has been speculated that Lytton and IB were romantically attached.
Raymond, William O. “Our Lady of Bellosguardo: A Pastel Portrait”. University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol.
xii
, 1943, pp. 446-63.
449
Browning, Robert, and Isa Blagden. “Introduction”. Dearest Isa: Robert Browning’s Letters to Isabella Blagden, edited by Edward C. McAleer, Greenwood Press, 1970, p. xix - xxxiii.
xxviii
Elizabeth Barrett Browning , among others, identified IB as Cordelia in Robert Lytton's poem Warnings and as the heroine of his verse-novel Lucile.
Browning, Robert, and Isa Blagden. “Introduction”. Dearest Isa: Robert Browning’s Letters to Isabella Blagden, edited by Edward C. McAleer, Greenwood Press, 1970, p. xix - xxxiii.
xxviii
Raymond, William O. “Our Lady of Bellosguardo: A Pastel Portrait”. University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol.
xii
, 1943, pp. 446-63.
451
Family and Intimate relationships Kathleen E. Innes
Kathleen Royds and George Innes were married in Cove, Hampshire, by her brother-in-law Allan Watson .
Whether by design or coincidence, their marriage date was the same chosen in 1846 by Elizabeth Barrett and...
Family and Intimate relationships Robert Browning
Following an intense epistolary courtship and occasional personal meetings, on 12 September 1846, RB secretly married Elizabeth Barrett , in defiance of her domineering father. The newlyweds eloped to Italy, where they lived until...
Family and Intimate relationships Ella Hepworth Dixon
Ella's elder sister Edith , who also wrote and who was a friend of Penn Browning (son of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning ), died at the age of twenty-two.
Dixon, Ella Hepworth. "As I Knew Them". Huchinson, 1930.
21, 44, 50-1, 228
Family and Intimate relationships E. Nesbit
EN first met Hubert Bland in 1877. He was a good-looking political and intellectual idealist, and a womaniser. Born to a working-class family in Woolwich, he was running a business and had hopes of...
Family and Intimate relationships Robert Browning
Crushed by the death of Elizabeth and holding her memory in the highest regard, RB seems never to have sought another partner despite being highly sociable and occasionally flirtatious. After her death, he returned to...
Family and Intimate relationships Eliza Cook
After moving into the home of Weekly Dispatch editor James Harmer , she became involved in a scandal (large enough to have been known to Elizabeth Barrett Browning , who wrote of it to Mary Russell Mitford
Family and Intimate relationships Dorothy Boulger
Dorothy's sister Alice Havers , three years younger, became an illustrator of books who worked on writings by DB and Elizabeth Barrett Browning , among others.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Family and Intimate relationships Adelaide Procter
AP 's mother, born Anne Skepper , was a clever and observant woman, a frequent and influential hostess to the London literary elite. Frances Kemble considered her notable for her pungent epigrams and brilliant sallies...
Family and Intimate relationships Matilda Hays
The intense relationship between MH and Cushman is the subject of considerable debate over whether it constituted a lesbian union. After meeting the pair, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote in a letter to a friend, I...
Family and Intimate relationships Margaret Fuller
Of the Fuller-Ossoli marriage, Barrett Browning (who described first learning of it as a surprise), wrote: the husband is a Roman marquis . . . appearing amiable & gentlemanly, & having fought well, they say...
Family and Intimate relationships Eliza Ogilvy
EO 's and Elizabeth Barrett Browning 's special relationship was centred around Eliza 's children, who were important to both the origin and continuation of the friendship.
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, 1973, pp. xi - xxiv; 175.
xxii
Leighton, Angela, and Margaret Reynolds, editors. Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology. Blackwell, 1995.
300
Elizabeth's only child, Robert Wiedemann ...
Friends, Associates Eliza Ogilvy
The friendship between EO and Elizabethran the course of most friendships, vacillating between spirited intimacy and formal disagreement.
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, 1973, pp. xi - xxiv; 175.
xiv
Barrett Browning always spoke of Ogilvy highly, but even though the friendship between the two...

Timeline

1897: Artisan Phoebe Traquair completed her lavishly...

Building item

1897

Artisan Phoebe Traquair completed her lavishly illustrated manuscript of Elizabeth Barrett Browning 's Sonnets from the Portuguese.
The National Library of Scotland, where the manuscript is housed, notes that the transcriptions are from Traquair's...

19 July 1904: King Edward VII laid the foundation stone...

Building item

19 July 1904

King Edward VII laid the foundation stone for Liverpool Cathedral, built to the designs of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott .
“The Cathedral”. 1904-2004: Liverpool Cathedral.

February 1930: D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee published...

Writing climate item

February 1930

D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee published The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse, which includes bad poetry by John Dryden , John Keats , and Elizabeth Barrett Browning along with other canonical figures.
Byatt, A. S. Indexers and Indexes in Fact and Fiction. Editor Bell, Hazel K., University of Toronto, 2001.
110
Lewis, D. B. Wyndham et al. The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse. 2nd edition, Capricorn, 1962.

May 1975: Cora Kaplan edited the first modern anthology...

Women writers item

May 1975

Cora Kaplan edited the first modern anthology of women's poetry in Britain: Salt and Bitter and Good: three centuries of English and American women poets, published by Paddington Press .
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
British Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons, 1874–1987.
1976

Texts

Browning, Robert, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The Brownings’ Correspondence. Editors Kelley, Philip et al., Wedgestone Press, 1984, 14 vols. to date.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. The Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Editors Clarke, Helen A. and Charlotte Porter, AMS Press, 1973, 6 vols.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Editor Kenyon, Frederic G., Macmillan, 1897, 2 vols.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 1836-1854. Editors Raymond, Meredith B. and Mary Rose Sullivan, Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University, 1983, 3 vols.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. The Poets’ Enchiridion. Printed exclusively for members of the Bibliophile Society, 1914.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. The Seraphim, and Other Poems. Saunders and Otley, 1838.