Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1806-61
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born as Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett, the eldest of twelve children of an autocratic father who forbade his children to marry. She studied Greek alongside her brother while a child, and began writing at a very young age, and published in her teens. She also in adolescence she developed the ill health (the causes or illnesses involved in which are still not determined) that affected the remainder of her life; from that time she lived the secluded life of an invalid. The abolition of slavery in 1833, in which she rejoiced, substantially decreased her father's income from his Jamaican plantations and led to the sale of the family home in the country, after which the family moved to London. Her 1844 Poems led to a two-year correspondence with Robert Browning (who was mentioned in them). They married secretly in 1846 and a few days left for Florence, where they were able to live on her independent income. Her health improved significantly after this point. She traveled, bore a son, and, despite her lasting grief after the drowning of her favourite brother in 1840 and her father's adamant refusal to see her after her elopement, continued her career as one of the most prominent poets of her time. After moving to Italy, Barrett Browning increasingly took up contemporary issues and debates including the Italian Nationalist cause, the abolition of slavery in the United States, and the position of women in Victorian society.
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