Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
-
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.
Robert Stark had loved Asolo since his student days in Rome, when he was shown the town by Pen Browning
, the son of Elizabeth Barrett
and Robert Browning
. Robert and Flora's close friend,...
Residence
Mary Russell Mitford
The first period of poverty after his marriage caused him to move his family from Alresford in Hampshire. (MRM
later remembered the Hampshire countryside with warm affection, and delighted in its nearness to...
Textual Features
Sarah Stickney Ellis
In a poem that can be seen as belonging to the emerging genre of the verse novel, SSE
takes up the question of the role of poetry in industrialised society, in conjunction with the theme...
Textual Features
Christina Fraser-Tytler
The book is divided by topic (confession, detachment from the world, guidance in perplexity, union with Christ, etc.). Included are only a few selections from women authors, namely Madame Guyon
, Christina Rossetti
, Caroline Matilda of Denmark
Textual Features
Christina Rossetti
Such verse would now be called political, in that it challenges accepted power structures. CR
also produced such poems as A Royal Princess (in which the daughter of a repressive king goes down to face...
Textual Features
Violet Fane
Young, innocent, and orphaned Constance Leigh (almost certainly named in salute to Barrett Browning
's influential verse novel Aurora Leigh
Hoagwood, Terence Allan et al. “Introduction”. Denzil Place, Scholar’s Facsimiles and Reprints, 1996, pp. 3-11.
3
) is married to old, ultra-Tory
Fane, Violet. Denzil Place. Chapman and Hall, 1875.
7
Sir John. Although her husband is kind...
Textual Features
Mary Catherine Hume
The other poems in the collection touch on the Crystal Palace (recently moved to its permanent home in Sydenham just south of London), Emanuel Swedenborg
, and MCH
's father, Joseph Hume
.
Hume, Mary Catherine. Normiton. J. W. Parker and Son, 1857.
prelims
Textual Features
Mary Russell Mitford
MRM
here mixed personal gossip, local scene-painting, criticism, and extracts.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Recollections of a Literary Life; or, Books, Places and People. R. Bentley, 1852, 3 vols.
They are highly derivative in style (from most of the standard poetical canon including Elizabeth Barrett Browning
), though The Japanese Fan shows the whimsical lightness of EF
's mature work. This poem describes a...
Textual Features
Agnes Giberne
A dedication to the memory of her mother quotes Not lost, but gone before (the title of a story by Margaret Gatty
).
Giberne, Agnes. Beside the Waters of Comfort. Sixth Edition, Seeley, 1911.
prelims
The book takes the bereaved through various stages of mourning and...
Textual Features
Augusta Webster
Like much of AW
's later poetry, this inaugural volume shows the influence of Alfred Tennyson
and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
, as well as earlier poets such as John Keats
. Many poems here, including...
The volume also includes several poems about shipwrecks and drownings, likely a reflection of AW
's nautical childhood. The Bitter Knight, Cruel Agnes, and Edith deploy traditional refrains in ways reminiscent of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Textual Features
Eliza Ogilvy
To the Poets of the New Generation addresses a generation which seems almost a throwback to the learned hermits of ancient days, who held aloof from war and suffering, and prayed in unintelligible languages. EO
Textual Features
Toni Morrison
The protagonist of the novel, Sethe, is a mother bereaved by slavery, herself a slave who ran awayfrom the ironically-named Sweet Home in Kentucky to Ohio, when the institution of slavery was nearing its...
