Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, n�e Barrett 1806-61
English poet

Born in Coxhoe Hall, Durham, she spent her childhood at Hope End, Herefordshire. At 10 she read Homer in the original, and at 14 wrote an epic on The Battle of Marathon. In her teens she damaged her spine, and was an invalid for a long time. Her Essay on Mind, and Other Poems, was published in 1826, and in 1833 she issued a translation of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, succeeded by The Seraphim, and Other Poems (1838), in which was republished the poem on William Cowper's grave. Poems (1844) contained 'The Cry of the Children', an outburst against the employment of young children in factories. In 1845 she met Robert Browning, and married him the following year. They settled in Pisa (1846) and then Florence (1847), where they became the centre of a literary circle. Her other works include Casa Guidi Windows (1851), Aurora Leigh (1856), Poems before Congress (1860), her best-known work Sonnets from the Portuguese (published in the Poems of 1850), and Last Poems (1851).

Bibliography: D Hewlett, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1953)