“Elizabeth Barret Browning: (1806-1861) English poet. In childhood she suffered a spinal injury and, until her meeting with Robert Browning, seemed to be doomed to invalidism and seclusion from the world. Barrett and Browning’s courtship under the eyes of her jealous, tyrannical father, their elopement, and subsequent happy married life in Italy form one of the most celebrated of literary romances. Hawthorne describe Mrs. Browning as ‘a pale, small person scarcely embodied at all,’ and this ethereality of her physical appearance is reflected by the palpitating fervor and unworldly tenderness and purity of her work. Often, however, these qualities decline into stridency, diffuseness, and confusion. Her themes were dictated by her broad humanitarian interests; a deep if unorthodox religious feeling, her affection for her adopted country, Italy; and her love for Browning. Her greatest work, Sonnets from the Portuguese, a sequence of love sonnets addressed to her husband, remains an extraordinary and living achievement. Her other works include Essay on Mind, with Other Poems (1826), a translation of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound (1833), The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838), Poems (1844), Casa Guidi Windows (1851), Aurora Leigh (1856), Poems before Congress (1860), and Last Poems (1862). See THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN, LADY GERALDINE’S COURTSHIP.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
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