Author: Barrett, Elizabeth
Biography:
BARRETT, Elizabeth Barrett, later BARRETT BROWNING (1806-61: ODNB)
Her full name was Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett but she preferred Elizabeth Barrett Barrett or EBB. She was the eldest of twelve children born to Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett (1785-1857), a plantation owner with estates in Jamaica, and his wife Mary Graham (1781-1828), and was born at Coxhoe Hall, County Durham, on 6 Mar. 1806. Of her siblings, she was closest to the next-born, Edward, whose death in 1840 was a heavy blow. Her early years were spent at Hope End, Herefordshire, where she was educated at home and encouraged to write by her parents. She was precocious and started writing her Battle of Marathon when she was eleven; her father had it privately printed for her fourteenth birthday. At fifteen she suffered symptoms of the illness which afflicted her intermittently for the rest of her life; it caused pain, weakness, and loss of mobility. She found an outlet in writing and she began contributing verse to periodicals. She developed a close friendship with Hugh Stuart Boyd (q.v.) with whom she studied Greek. From 1836 she was a friend and correspondent of Mary Russell Mitford (q.v.) who encouraged her literary aspirations. The family suffered financial losses that required the sale of Hope End and the family moved to London where they settled at 50 Wimpole Street. Elizabeth had her own inherited income from her grandmother and an uncle. She was writing and publishing prolifically when Robert Browning (q.v.) wrote his first admiring letter to her in Jan. 1845. The two eventually met and, against her father’s wishes, they married in a private ceremony in St. Marylebone church on 12 Sept. 1846. Her father disinherited her, never again communicating with her. She and Browning moved to Italy, settling first in Pisa and then in Casa Guidi, Florence, where they remained for the rest of her life. She suffered several miscarriages but a son, Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning, was born on 9 Mar. 1849. In her later years she was interested in spiritualism and Italian politics. Her health steadily declined and she died on 26 June 1861 at Casa Guidi. Although her verse was not always favourably received, she was recognised then as now as a major writer of the nineteenth century. Of her many works, Aurora Leigh (1857) is perhaps the most ambitious and most controversial. (ODNB 9 June 2023)
Other Names:
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- Elizabeth Barrett Barrett