Make your own free website on Tripod.com

The "Grandmother" of Victorian Poetry
Home
Bibliography
Reputation & Criticism
Current Criticism

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

1806-1861

Elizabeth Barrett Browning opened the doors for many future female poets in her lifetime. She was one of the very select women of the Victorian era to actually be praised for her work instead of ridiculed. Her life was one filled with prestige, heavy criticism, and sickness. She has written numerous collections of poetry most of which were published before her death. Though her work has been forgotten and lost, even today British and American critics are re-evaluating and re-analyzing her life and work.

ebb.jpg

A Short Biography

A Short Biography

            Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett was born in 1806 to Edward Barrett Moulton-Barrett and Mary Graham Clark at Coxhoe Hall in Durham County, England.  She was the eldest of twelve children (Radley, 15).  Her family moved to the Hope End estate by the time she was three years old, and this was the home that she grew up in and cherished.  She grew up in an upper-middle class English family having all of the amenities such as having a lot of free time for activities such as needlework, drawing, dancing, and learning how to play the piano (Dennis, 20).

            Elizabeth began to write verse around the age of four, being intellectually advanced for her age, especially in a time where women were usually not considered to be intellectual individuals at all.  It is highly discussed that she wrote her first epic, The Battle of Marathon at the early age of twelve (Radley, 15).  Her father Edward was very intrigued by the talents that his eldest daughter represented at an early age, and because of his intrigue, he tended to feed to her abilities and grant her the permission to learn and educate herself to better her writing.

            Barretts parents are best described as her mother being physically and temperamentally weak, and her father as a tyrannically dominant and strong-willed man (Leighton, 12).  At the age of twenty-two, her mother passed on, leaving her to help her father take care of her ten siblings (Leighton, 12).  Leighton describes her father as one who took the Victorian emphases on family and the male-oriented hierarchy to extremes.  He did not want any of his children to leave the household.  Instead he wanted for them all to stick together, working together and never marrying or becoming independentElizabeth was his main concern as she proved to hold the strongest talents of all of the children (12-13).

            Shortly before her mother passed on, Elizabeth started her lifelong journey of her periodic illnesses in 1815; she refused to let this get in the way of her creativity and writing abilities (Radley, 16).  In 1830-31, her family began to have some severe financial difficulty, and because of this she had to move with her family out of the Hope end estate where she grew up.  From leaving Hope End, Miss Barrett continued to work on her poetry and moved about with her siblings until finally settling in 1838 at the infamous No. 50 Wimpole Street in London where the Barrett Moulton-Barretts claimed their new home (Radley 19). 

            Elizabeth continued to struggle with her various bouts of illness throughout most of the 1830s.  Her brother passed away in July of 1840 while she was living in Jamaica and this was one of the biggest upsets in her life because she and her brother were very close (Radley, 20).  It was after this tragic event in her life where Miss Barrett really began to seriously work on her poetry, and the end result of this time period after her brothers death was the publication of her poems of 1844 (Radley, 22).

            This publication became Barretts big break in the Victorian poetic society.  From this point she continued to meet many of Englands most famous poets of the time, including the beginning of a series of letters to ensue from the famous Robert Browning.  He took a liking to her work, and through much correspondence, they fell in love and we finally married on September 12, 1846 (Radley, 23).  One of the most significant aspects of the marriage between Robert and Elizabeth was the equality that the two showed within the relationship (Radley, 24).  Three years of wedded bless led to the birth of their only son, Robert Weidman when Elizabeth was forty-three years old (Radley, 24).

            Throughout Barrett-Brownings remaining years, she spent a great deal of time with her husband and child traveling throughout Europe.  Some of their favorite places to visit were Italy and France.  In 1855, Barrett-Brownings health began to once again take a turn for the worse, and it became apparent that she must stay in a moderate climate at all times.  This contributed for the Brownings staying in Italy in the winters and France in the summers (Radley, 25).

            As her health progressively continued to decline, her bronchial illness intensified putting Elizabeth on strict bed rest.  On June 29, 1861 Elizabeth Barrett Browning passed away at the age of fifty-five in her husbands arms at their Florence, Italy home.  Her last word to husband, as cited in a letter to one of their dear friends was Elizabeth summarizing her life and marriage in one word, beautiful (Forster, 366).