{\b Elizabeth Barrett Browning}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 6 March 1806 

{\b Date of Death}.: 29 June 1861

{\b Works}.

Poems  (1844), Aurora Leigh  (1846-56, published 1857), Sonnets from the 
Portuguese  (1850), Casa Guidi Windows  (1850s), Last Poems  (1857-61), Poems 
Before Congress  (1860).

{\b Featured Works}.

'Bianca Among the Nightingales', 'From: Sonnets From the Portuguese', 'From: 
Sonnets From the Portuguese', 'The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers', 'Grief', 
'To Flush, My Dog', 'A Musical Instrument', "I Thought Once How Theocritus Had 
Sung", "Unlike Are We, Unlike, O Princely Heart!", "What Can I Give Thee Back, 
O Liberal", 'The Weakest Thing', "When Our Two Souls Stand Up Erect and 
Strong", 'The Cry of the Children', 'Amy's Cruelty', 'The Forced Recruit', 
'The Romance of the Swan's Nest'.

{\b General Comment}.

An English poet widely read by her contemporaries, Elizabeth Barrett Browning 
was born the eldest of eleven children in Coxhoe Hall near Durham. The family 
moved to Hope End in Herefordshire in 1809 where Elizabeth spent her 
childhood. An avid reader, she was educated at home where her father gave her 
access to his classical library.  Her first volume of poems was privately 
published when she was 14.

She suffered from ill health for most of her life. Her mother died in 1828 and 
her father was forced to sell Hope End in 1832 during the Abolition movement 
with the result that the family moved to London.  Ten years later Elizabeth 
was more or less an invalid, but used her confinement to write Poems  (1844) 
which was celebrated by all and which led to her introduction by letter to the 
poet Robert Browning. She also became a good friend of Miss Mitford at this 
time. On 12 September 1846 she clandestinely married Browning, and moved 
immediately to Italy.  They settled in Florence, in Casa Guidi where in 1849 
she gave birth to a son, Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning.

Her health improved greatly during her years in Italy, allowing her to travel 
throughout Europe. By the time of the publication of Aurora Leigh, a poem 
dealing with the restrictions imposed on women by Victorian society, she was 
firmly established as a poet of distinction. In fact, most of her work 
expresses her concern for the liberal causes of her day, including the cause 
of Italian nationalism. The Sonnets from the Portuguese  (1850) altered the 
conventions of the love sonnet by the use of a tone of playful humour. In the 
last years of her life she was influenced by the popular interest in 
spiritualism. The Poems Before Congress  (1860), although written in her final 
years when her health was deteriorating, are said to contain some of her most 
forceful and beautiful lyrics.