Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Life and writing

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) was an English poet. Her collected Poems appeared in 1844, and the 1850 selection included Sonnets from the Portuguese. She married Robert Browning in 1846 and subsequently lived in Italy.

Her work extends beyond love poetry. Casa Guidi Windows (1851) reflects on political events in Italy, and Poems Before Congress appeared in 1860. Aurora Leigh was published in 1856; the linked reading edition carries a London title page dated 1857.

Aurora Leigh opens with a narrator choosing to write her own story, then recalls childhood and family relationships. Read an extracted line alongside its speaker and surrounding passage: a verse narrative does not make every sentence a direct statement of the poet’s own views.

Reading this voice

The selected passages come from different works, including Aurora Leigh and A Vision of Poets; the linked book contains Aurora Leigh, not all the poems represented here. Historical anthology wording remains intact and can differ from the linked edition. The checked profile uses 1806–1861; the anthology records 1809–1861. Its existing approximate 1835 placement is a midpoint based on those historical anthology dates, not a composition date. That source-derived timeline has not been silently recalculated.

Subjects to explore

Words to begin with

• God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers, And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face, A gauntlet with a gift in 't.
• The growing drama has outgrown such toys Of simulated stature, face, and speech: It also peradventure may outgrow The simulation of the painted scene, Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume, And take for a worthier stage the soul itself, Its shifting fancies and celestial lights, With all its grand orchestral silences To keep the pauses of its rhythmic sounds.
• There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb The crowns o' the world; oh, eyes sublime With tears and laughter for all time!