Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born in 1806 in County Durham, England. She was the eldest of twelve children born to Edward Barrett Moulin Barrett and Mary Graham Clarke. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, or "Ba", grew up in her family’s estate Hope End, Henfordshire. They were part of the upper-middle class, owning a successful sugar trade.
Elizabeth began writing at a very early age. When she was twelve her father had her first epic poem "The Battle of Marathon" privately printed (Radley 15). She referred to this work as "Pope’s Homer done over again, or rather undone" (28). Her diary at this time in her life offered glimpses into her perceptive and expressive writing style.
Three years later she became continuously ill. A doctor diagnosed her with a "nervous disorder" and gave her opium to ease her mind. She became a habitual user of opium throughout her life (17).
In 1825 she published her first poem called "The Rose and Zephyr". It was published in the November 19th issue of the "Literary Gazette". Two years later her father’s business took a turn for the worse. The family was forced to move out of the Hope End estate and to Sidmouth, Devonshire. During this period of financial trouble Elizabeth’s mother suddenly died. Elizabeth became her father’s close friend and confidant. He relied on Elizabeth a great deal. He forbade his daughter to marry because he relied on her so much.
In the years following her mother’s passing, Elizabeth had more of her works published. "An Essay a Mind with Other Poems", translations of Aeschylus "Prometheus Bound...and Miscellaneous Poems", and The Seraphim and Other Poems were published. The Seraphim was the first work published by Elizabeth in her name. T...
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... and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1845-1846 (1969) Edited by Elvan Kintner, two volumes.
Diary by E. B. B.: The Unpublished Diary of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1831-1832 (1969) Edited by Philip Kelley and Ronald Hudson.
Invisible Friends (1972) The Correspondence of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1842-1845. Edited by Willard Bissell Pope.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Letters to Mrs. David Ogilvy, 1849-1861 (1973) Edited by Peter N. Heydon and Philip Kelley.
Anthology Prometheus Bound (1833) Translated from the Greek of Aeschylus
(from the Academy of American Poets: http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=153)
Useful Links
The Victorian Web’s Elizabeth Barrett Browning Site:
http://65.107.211.206/victorian/ebb/browningov.html
Erin’s Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning Website:
http://www.cswnet.com/~erin/browning.htm
The American military draft was put into affect in 1940 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Selective Training and Service Act. The draft was a system that was an involuntary requirement of those who were of age and proper health. Young American men between the ages of eighteen and twenty five who were in good health and of a stable mental state were required by the government to register. These men would register with the Selective Service therefore they could be found easily in a time of need. The draft required these young men to sign up to serve their country involuntarily because it was to benefit the country, to make it easier to respond and protect in a time of war or crisis. In 1973,
Her style of writing is common for this time period however it was uncommon for a woman to be doing the writing. In one of her poems, "In Reference to Her Children, 23 June, 1659" she portrays her children as birds relating it back to nature. The nature aspect adds a tranquil feeling to her poems. She describes her children's lives as if they were birds and goes on to close the poem by saying "farewell my birds, farewell adieu"(Bradstreet 92). She uses nature in this poem to make her children seem simple and calm. She writes about religion is in almost every one of her works, but it is most clear in "A Dialogue Between Old England and New" where she lists out the difference between the two lands. She writes "Before I tell the effect I'll show my cause, which are my sins-- the breach of sacred laws"(Bradstreet 90). In this line she is referring to the old England and their secular ways, she feels that by taking place in the ways of the old England that she has committed many sins. She came to America to correct her ways and to spread her religion. This poem tells the good and the bad of both lands. She pays homage to the problems with England and tells of her hopes for the future of America. She was also a realist, she told life to way it was. In "Upon a Fit of Sickness , Anno 1632 Aetatis Suae" she is very placid about the fact that she
Over forty years has passed since the United States inducted the last draftee through the Selective Service System. The Selective Service System is an independent agency of the United States, which gives the President the right or power to conscript men for military service. There have been different Acts passed by congress since 1917 that require men of various ages to register for service. Although, the name of each Act and the age requirements of the registries changed, the Acts were all similar in nature. They all gave the President the right to call men to war when he deemed necessary. In January 1973, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announced the creation of the all-volunteer service, retracting the need for the draft (GAO.gov). Under current law, all men between the ages of 18-25 must register within 30 days of their 18th birthday, however this information is used mostly for recruitment purposes and in case of any future crisis. There has been much controversy over this matter since the Vietnam War, when people started to realize the draft was unfair due to loopholes and draft exemptions making the draft unfair for working men. At one point in time the military draft may have been necessary, but today’s all-volunteer military has eliminated the need for a draft.
Waterman, Bryan. "Coquetry and Correspondence in Revolutionary-Era: Reading Elizabeth Whitman’s Letters." Early American Literature (2011): 541-563.
Charters, Ann & Samuel. Literature and its Writers. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2013. 137-147. Print.
Burns, Olive Ann. “Boy howdy, ma'am you have sent us a fine book.” The English Journal. Dec. 1989: 16-20 Web. 14 NCTE Jan. 2014
Although the United States has replaced a partially drafted army with an all-volunteer army, the Selective Service System stills allows men to be drafted if the military is too small (Olson-Raymer, par. 48-50). When the United States invaded Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Americans voluntarily enlisted (par. 55). Despite this, military personnel claimed that there was a shortage of soldiers, and a draft would be beneficial in the war effort (Thompson, par. 7). Fortunately, the draft remained and still remains unnecessary. Whenever a draft has been implemented in the United States, controversy has ensued. Some people think a draft
Elizabeth led England during it’s greatest time of influence as a nation despite the prejudices against her gender. Many people believe that her life was like a fairy tale-“Beloved by the kingdom; dressed by servants in jewels and gold, silk and velvet; pampered and treasured by kings and married to princes”, but in reality her life did not come close to being a fairy tale. Many of her subjects hater her from the moment she was born. She experienced imprisonment, her sister threatened to kill her, and she was almost forced in marriages with men she hated. Some of her friends caused uprisings in her name. Her enemies tried to assassinate her. Her father had her mother beheaded and ignored her for most of her life. Although she had many suitors, she never loved any of them. She understood the common people and eventually gained the loyalty of those who hated her. She could also be ruthless. The city gates and London Bridge held the bodies of the people that she executed during her reign.
Since a young age Barrett Browning had shown significant amounts of interest in poetry and literature. By the age of four she had began reading and writing verse. “She was educated at home, and learned classic Greek, Latin, and several modern languages” (Shilstone 646). For being self-educated, her devotion to poetry, literature, and classical studies was exceptional (EXPLORING Poetry). “Elizabeth could read Homer in the original at 8 years old” (Greer). “She completed an epic poem, ‘Battle of Marathon’. when she was thirteen, and her father had it privately printed” (Greer).
Elizabeth Barrett Browning is an English Poet of the Romantic Movement who read various number of Shakespeare’s plays and many different passages from Paradise Lost before the age of 10. As a child, Elizabeth suffered from lung ailment and spinal injury that had plagued her for the rest of her life, but that didn’t stop her from completing her education, and writing numerous amount of sonnets and poems. When she was living under her father’s tyrannical rule, she bitterly opposed slavery and her siblings being sent away to Jamaica by writing the poem, The Seraphim and Other Poems, that expresses the Christian sentiments in the form of Greek tragedy. In 1846, the couple, Elizabeth and Robert, eloped and settled in Florence, Italy, in which helped
Five years later her father retired from his job to take care of all of the children and happened upon Lazarus’ poetry notebooks. After reading them and taking a great liking to them, he carried the poems off without Lazarus’ consent and had them published for private circulation. When Lazarus was informed, her poems had already received much praise so, adding t...
One of the most fundamental problems with conscription is that it contradicts one of the main concepts that the United States was built on. The entire concept of conscription “violated fundamental principles of individual liberty” (“Should a Year…” n.pag.). To obligate one to serve in a field which they normally would not choose is to take away their rights as an individual to decide how best they should spend their working life. Aside from being ethically wrong on a basic level, conscription violates a literal law composed by the leaders of the United States. The 13th amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America says, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction” (“Should a Year…” n.pag.). This unquestionably insists that any mandatory ...
Flynn, George, Conscription and Democracy: The Draft in France, Great Britain and the United States. West Port, Connecticut, Greenwood Press (2002)
Dickinson, Emily Elizabeth (1830-1886), America’s best-known female poet and one of the foremost authors in American literature. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, Dickinson was the middle child of a lawyer and one-term United States congressional representative, Edward Dickinson, and his wife, Emily Norcross Dickinson. From 1840 to 1847 she attended the Amherst Academy, and from 1847 to 1848 she studied at the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, a few miles from Amherst. Dickinson remained in Amherst, living in the same house on Main Street from 1855 until her death. During her lifetime, she published only about 10 of her nearly 2,000 poems, in newspapers, Civil War journals, and a poetry anthology. The notion that Dickinson was extremely reclusive is a popular one, but it is at best a partial truth. Although she never married and certainly became more selective over the years about the company she kept, Dickinson was far more sociable than most descriptions would have us believe. Biographers are increasingly recognizing the vital role of Dickinson’s sister-in-law, Susan Dickinson, in her writing. For more than 35 years the two women lived next door to each other, sharing mutual passions for literature, music, cooking, and gardening. Emily sent Susan more than 400 poems and letter-poems, twice as many as she sent to any other correspondent. In 1998 Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson was published, documenting the two women’s friendship.
When I ask my dad why he started smoking he would say to be cool. Millions of people started smoking not knowing what would happen to them in years later. Most smokers like my dad have tried to stop but have failed. There are lots of side effects besides smelling bad. If you have children there is a potential to pass second hand smoking that may lead to the same diseases has the smoker can contracted. Most smokers don’t even know the makeup of a cigarette and what those chemical can do to you. Nicotine is an insecticide and interferes with the nervous systems. When a smoker smokes the nicotine, it reaches the brain faster about 7 seconds. This stimulates cells in the brain and blocks the nerve impulses. This is where the addiction happens not with tobacco with nicotine. “Nicotine also causes accelerated heart rate, but at the same time it leads to contracting and hardening of the arteries.”(Tabaco Stop Center)