Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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:

1.	1828  Anonymous, Review of Browning, An Essay on Mind with other Poems; Imperial Magazine 10 (May 1828) 459-62.
2.	1828  Anonymous, Review of Browning, An Essay on Mind; Gentleman's Magazine 98 (December 1828) 533.
3.	1828  J. S. B. Junr., "Lines, suggested by reading an Extract from Miss Barrett's Essay on Mind, reviewed in the Imperial Magazine" Imperial Magazine 10 (October 1828) 939-40.
4.	1836  Mary Russell Mitford to Dr. Mitford, 28-29 May 1836; L'Estrange, Life of Mary Russell Mitford (1870) 2:176.
5.	1844  R. H. Horne, "Miss E. B. Barrett and Mrs. Norton" New Spirit of the Age (1844; 2d edition) 2:131-40.
6.	1851  David Macbeth Moir, in Sketches of the Poetical Literature of the Past Half-Century (1851; 1852) 280-84.
7.	1852  Mary Russell Mitford, "Married Poets. Elizabeth Barrett Browning — Robert Browning" Recollections of a Literary Life; or Books, Places, and People (1852) 169-84.
8.	1855  Sarah Josepha Hale, Woman's Record; or, Sketches of all Distinguished Women (1852; 1855) 605-06.
9.	1857  Walter Savage Landor to John Forster, 1857; Forster, Landor, a Biography (1869) 47-48.
10.	1880  William T. Arnold, in The English Poets: Selections with Critical Introductions, ed. Thomas Humphry Ward (1880) 4:562-67.
11.	1882  Epes Sargent, in Harper's Cyclopaedia of British and American Poetry (1882) 667.

BIOGRAPHY RECORDS
for Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

1.	1844  Robert Chambers, in Cyclopaedia of English Literature (1844; 1850) 2:461.
2.	1861  Anonymous, Obituary in Gentleman's Magazine 211 (August 1861) 215.
3.	1876  Robert Carruthers, in Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature, 3rd ed. (1876; 1879) 7:123-24.
4.	1892  Frederic Boase, Modern English Biography (1892-1921) 1:447.

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.