Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning née Barrett (1806-1861) was an English poet. She was wife of poet Robert Browning. Her work is marked by musical diction, sensibility, knowledge, and imagination, which no poetess has rivalled.

She was a woman of great natural abilities, which developed early. However, at the age of 15 she became semi-invalid after spinal injury and went to Torquay for her health. She witnessed the death by drowning of a brother, that gave her a shock the effect of which never left her.

Her childhood marked by intellectual precociousness; read Homer in original at age 10, wrote epic on Battle of Marathon at age 14; first published work was Essay on Mind, and Other Poems at age 19.

Married poet Robert Browning in 1846; traveled to Italy; formed literary circle; published numerous poems and collections; most famous works include Sonnets from the Portuguese and Aurora leigh.

She published in 1838 "The Seraphim," and in 1844 "The Cry of the Children".

She fell in with and married Robert Browning in 1846, who immediately took her abroad, settling in Florence; wrote in 1850 "Sonnets from the Portuguese," in 1851 "Casa Guidi Windows," and in 1856 "Aurora Leigh," "a novel in verse," and in 1860 "Poems before Congress"; ranks high, if not highest, among the poetesses of England; she took an interest all through life in public affairs.

Wisdom & Quotes

• What is art

But life upon the larger scale, the higher,
When, graduating up in a spiral line
Of still expanding and ascending gyres,
It pushes toward the intense significance
Of all things, hungry for the
Infinite?
Art's life, - and where we live, we suffer and toil.
- Aurora Leigh

• Books succeed,

And lives fail.
- Aurora Leigh

• Never say No when the world says Aye.

- Aurora Leigh

• I should not dare to call my soul my own.

- Aurora Leigh

• Since when was genius found respectable?

- Aurora Leigh

• Whoever loves true life, will love true love.

- Aurora Leigh

• The world's male chivalry has perished out,

But women are knight-errants to the last.
- Aurora Leigh

• Most illogical

Irrational nature of our womanhood,
That blushes one way, feels another ways,
And prays, perhaps another!
- Aurora Leigh

• So fair,

She takes the breath of men away
Who gaze upon her unaware.
- Bianca among the Nightingales

• God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.

- Sonnets from the Portuguese

• How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
- Sonnets from the Portuguese, 43

• I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
- Sonnet from the Portuguese, 43

• 'Yes', I answered you last night;

'No', this morning, sir, I say;
Colours seen by candle-light
Will not look the same by day.
- The Lady's 'Yes'

• I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.

- 'Grief', Poems of 1844

• If we tried

To sink the past beneath our feet, be sure
The future would not stand.
- Casa Guidi Windows

John Stuart Mill