Biography on elizabeth barrett browning - Research Paper Example

Biography on Elizabeth Barrett Browning Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born in March 6th, 1806 and grew up to be the mosttalented and respectful lady poet of the Victorian era. She struggled with lung and spine disease which she battled with, on and off up to the time of her death in 1961. She regarded most of her works as personal and some were never published while she was alive. She wrote many poems and prose. Most of her prose works were letters which she had sent to different people, with almost six hundred of them being sent to her husband, Robert Browning.

Through the letters, we are able to deduce her state, her health and emotional state. In The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1897), there is a chronological account of how her love for the Mr. Browning’s poems grew into their friendship, secret courtship and eventually marriage and elopement. These letters provide a kind of an impossible love for a determined couple complicated by illness and an unforgiving father. As such, she was disinherited for choosing to marry Mr. Browning without his father’s consent.

Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) is a collection of love poems which was inspired by the pure and true love of her husband. Although she had suffered a lot in life, her illness, the death of her mother and her closest brother, she expresses love in a very sentimental way especially in the poem How Do I Love Thee?. This poem has attracted a lot of relevance in poetic romance. She expresses spirituality in her testimonies about how much she loves her husband. This poem has surpassed her even after death as it is prevalently celebrated in modern weddings.

Elizabeth’s father owned an enormous estate which was founded on slavery as workers were underpaid and worked under very poor conditions. However, Elizabeth was overtly opposed to human slavery and social injustices and spoke about the struggle of slaves in her poem, A Curse for a Nation from the collection Poems Before Congress (1860).Works CitedElizabeth Barrett Browning, “The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning” (1897)Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sonnets from the Portuguese” (1850)Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Poems Before Congress” (1860)