British+Poet-+Elizabeth+Barrett+Browning

= Elizabeth Barrett Browning =

Born in 1806 at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, England, Elizabeth Barrett, was an English poet of the Romantic Movement. Her parents were Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett and Mary Graham Clarke; Elizabeth was the eldest of their 12 children. For centuries, the Barrett family, who were part Creole, had lived in Jamaica, where they owned sugar plantations and relied on slave labor. Elizabeth's father, Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett, chose to raise his family in England, while his fortune grew in Jamaica. S he was an intensely studious, precocious child. At age six she was reading novels. At eight she was entranced by Pope's translations of Homer, studying Greek at ten and writing her own Homeric epic "The Battle of Marathon". Barrett Browning's first known poem was written at the age of six or eight, "On the Cruelty of Forcement to Man". By age twelve, she had written her first "epic" poem, which consisted of four books of rhyming couplets. Both her parents encouraged her work. Her mother compiled early efforts of the child's poetry into collections and her father called her the 'Poet Laureate of Hope End.’ At age fourteen, Elizabeth developed a lung ailment that plagued her for the rest of her life. Doctors began treating her with morphine, which she would take until her death. While saddling a pony when she was fifteen, Elizabeth also suffered a spinal injury. Barrett Browning wrote on several "liberal" topics, such as abolition. She did, however, also write other style. One of her more famous poems begins "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" in reference to her husband Robert. Barrett Browning's work is characterized by celebration of passion, marriage, and the person - often through religious imagery. She can be criticized as having loose diction and unconventional rhymes, however it's argued that she was experimental, rather than inept. Much of Barrett Browning’s work carries a religious theme. She had read and studied such famous literary works as Milton's Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno. She says in her writing, "We want the sense of the saturation of Christ's blood upon the souls of our poets, that it may cry through them in answer to the ceaseless wail of the Sphinx of our humanity, expounding agony into renovation. Something of this has been perceived in art when its glory was at the fullest. Something of a yearning after this may be seen among the Greek Christian poets, something which would have been much with a stronger faculty". She explored the religious aspect in many of her poems, especially in her early work, such as the sonnets. She was interested in theological debate, had learned Hebrew and read the Hebrew Bible. Elizabeth met Robert Browning, a man six years her senior, after Robert became inspired by her poetry. It inspired him so much that be began to write to her, telling her how much he loved her work. Though their romance was bitterly opposed by her father, who did not want any of his children to marry, the couple eloped in 1846 and settled in Florence, Italy, where Elizabeth's health improved and she bore a son, Robert Wideman Browning. Her father never spoke to her again. Barrett Browning inspired many fellow poets including Edgar Allen Poe, who borrowed the meter from Browning's "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" and used it in his famous poem, "The Raven." Elizabeth Barrett Browning died in Florence on June 29, 1861.

Works Cited "Elizabeth Barrett Browning." //Poets.org//. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2013. . "Elizabeth Barrett Browning." //Wikipedia//. Wikimedia Foundation, 25 Apr. 2013. Web. 28 Apr. 2013. . "Lady Geraldine's Courtship : The Style and Work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning." //Lady Geraldine's Courtship : The Style and Work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning//. N.p., 19 Apr. 2002. Web. 28 Apr. 2013. .