Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Life, Love, and Poetry

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a remarkable woman who was deeply interested in reading grand pieces of literature and began writing her own literature at a very young age. She was very privileged to be financially independent, but also very unfortunate to have suffered an accident which resulted in great physical disadvantages. The combination of both, however, gave her the needed time to write her poetry. She fell in love with Robert Browning, a great admirer of her work, and, during their courtship, Barrett Browning wrote a series of poems, “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” as a reflection of her feelings for him. Barrett Browning was a very skilled writer and had the ability to disguise and incorporate distinguished and very meaningful parts of her life into her work (“Elizabeth Browning…”134). Especially remarkable is the reflection of her life in her love poem “Sonnet 43,” “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” in which she confides her deep love and appreciation for her husband in combination with many of her emotional biographical events, such as her childhood relationship to God, her illness, her losses, and her demanding father – perhaps unknowingly engaging in self-therapy.

Her publications and fame brought Barrett Browning to her future husband, Robert Browning, for whom she secretly writes a collection of poetry, “Sonnets from the Portuguese”, that includes her life-reflecting “Sonnet 43”. Gardner B. Taplin describes Barrett Browning’s way to fame in his biographical essay, “Elizabeth Barrett Browning,” when he writes, “The many reviews that appeared both in England and America almost all hailed her as a young poet of extraordinary ability and still greater promise” (Taplin). Poetry lovers in England and Am...

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