(1806–61). The ethereal English poet Elizabeth Barrett seemed to be resigned to a life of isolation and invalidism until she met a younger poet, Robert Browning, when she was 39 years old. After her second volume of poetry was published in 1844, he had telegraphed, “I love your verses with all my heart. . . . and I love you too.” In spite of her possessive father, he courted her for a year and married her secretly. Her immortal ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese' (“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”) were addressed to her husband. Elizabeth Moulton (Barrett) was born on March 6, 1806, in Durham. The oldest of 11 children, she read Greek at 8 and at 12 wrote an epic poem that her father had printed. A lively child until she was 15, she suffered a spinal injury and began to languish in her room. But her extraordinary poems brought admirers to her bedside. Among them was Browning, who convinced her that her illness was largely imaginary. The famous literary couple eloped to Italy in 1846. They had one son, born in 1849. Elizabeth Barrett Browning died in Florence on June 30, 1861. |