While still a child Elizabeth Barrett mastered Greek and composed her epic Battle of Marathon. After her mother's death in 1826 the family resided in London where the poet, living as a semi-invalid, published several volumes of poems and made the acquaintance of Mary Russell Mitford. She married Robert Browning in 1846, and immediately afterwards they departed for Italy to preserve her health. There she wrote Casa Guidi Windows and Aurora Leigh. She died in Florence in 1861.
TEXT RECORDS:
1824Stanzas on the Death of Lord Byron.
1826Spenserian Stanzas on a Boy of Three Years Old.
1826The Dream. A Fragment.
1826The Prayer.
1826Verses to my Brother.
PUBLICATIONS:
The battle of Marathon: a poem. 1820.
Essay on mind, with other poems. 1826.
Prometheus bound, translated ... and miscellaneous poems. 1833.
The Seraphim and other poems. 1838.
Poems. 2 vols, 1844.
Poems. 2 vols, 1850.
Casa Guidi windows: a poem. 1851.
Two poems. 1854.
Aurora Leigh. 1857.
Poems before congress. 1860.
Last poems. 1862.
Poetical works. 5 vols, 1866.
The Browning's correspondence, ed. P. Kelley, R. Hudson, and S. Lewis. 1984-
PROFILE AND
ASSOCIATES:
English
Anglican
privately educated
poet
woman writer
Anna Brownell Jameson
Robert Shelton Mackenzie
Mary Russell Mitford
REFERENCE:
DNB; NCBEL; CBEL (3rd ed).
R. H. Horne, in New Spirit of the Age (1844); Frederic Rowton, Female Poets of Great Britain (1853); Sarah Josepha Hale, Woman's Record (1855); Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1858-71; 1882); obituary in Gentleman's Magazine 211 (August 1861) 215; Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature 3rd ed. (1876); The English Poets, ed. Thomas Humphry Ward (1880); Eric S. Robertson, in English Poetesses, a Series of Critical Biographies (1883); J. H. Ingram, Mrs. Browing (1888); Frederic Boase, Modern English Biography (1892-1921); Spenser Encyclopedia, "Elizabeth Barrett Browning" (1990) 116-17.
COMMENTARY RECORDS
for Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
BIOGRAPHY RECORDS
for Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
AUTHOR AS CRITIC:
(commentary records)
1. | 1824 Lord Byron: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "Stanzas on the Death of Lord Byron" (1824) in An Essay on Mind (1826) 116-19. |