Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Encyclopedia Extract :: essays research papers

Shilst single, F.W.(1996). browning, Elizabeth Barrett. In World Book Encyclopedia (Volume 2, pp. 655-656). Chicago World Book, Inc.Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the best-known poets of her eon. The oldest of twelve children in an upper middle-class family, she received no formal education, but a desire for knowledge enabled her to learn octette languages on her own. She began make-up poetry as a child, and by the time she reached adulthood she had published four immensely popular volumes of verse. Though a longtime illness made her something of a recluse, Barrett was able to meet many a(prenominal) of the leading writers of the day. In 1845, she began to receive letters from the poet Robert Browning, who, after five months of correspondence, remunerative her a visit. They fell in sack out, and when Elizabeth&8217s stern father refused to relinquish her to spend the winter of 1846 in Italy as her doctors had advised, she and Browning &8220married secretly at that pl ace (Shilstone, 1996, p.656). In 1849, their son was born, whom they nicknamed Pen.Elizabeth Barrett Browning used many different emotions when writing her poetry. In the appeal, Sonnets from the Portuguese (1849), Elizabeth let the love for her husband speak. The whole collection is forty-four poems written to Robert Browning. Aurora Leigh (1857) is yet another example of love being prominent in Elizabeth&8217s writings. Another element in Elizabeth&8217s writings is statements about faith and her illness/death. In the settlement line 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 revive the sonnet cycle, which is a series of sonnets loosely connected by a common subject or theme.