Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Encyclopedia Extract :: essays research papers

Shilstone, F.W.(1996). Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. In realness Book Encyclopedia (Volume 2, pp. 655-656). Chicago World Book, Inc.Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the known poets of her time. The oldest of twelve children in an upper middle-class family, she received no dinner dress education, just a desire for knowledge enabled her to learn eight languages on her own. She began writing poetry as a child, and by the time she reached maturity she had published four immensely popular volumes of verse. Though a old illness made her something of a recluse, Barrett was able to meet many of the leaders writers of the day. In 1845, she began to receive letters from the poet Robert Browning, who, after five months of correspondence, paid her a visit. They fell in love, and when Elizabeth&8217s stern father refused to allow her to swing the winter of 1846 in Italy as her doctors had advised, she and Browning &8220married secretly there (Shilstone, 1996, p.656). In 1849, their s on was born, whom they nicknamed Pen.Elizabeth Barrett Browning used many different emotions when writing her poetry. In the collection, Sonnets from the Portuguese (1849), Elizabeth let the love for her husband speak. The whole collection is xliv poems written to Robert Browning. Aurora Leigh (1857) is yet another example of love organism prominent in Elizabeth&8217s writings. Another element in Elizabeth&8217s writings is statements about faith and her illness/death. In the closing reap of her &8220most famous sonnet (p.656) Sonnet 43 Elizabeth says, &8220and if God choose,/ I shall but love thee better after death. In the 19th century, Elizabeth Barrett Browning helped to doctor the sonnet cycle, which is a series of sonnets loosely connected by a common subject or theme.