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Elizabeth Barrett Browning (née Moulton-Barrett; 6 March 1806 – 29 June 1861) was an English poet of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime and frequently anthologised after her death. Her work received renewed attention following the feminist scholarship of the 1970s and 1980s, and greater recognition of women writers in English. Born in County Durham, the eldest of 12 children, Elizabeth Barrett wrote poetry from the age of eleven. Her mother's collection of her poems forms one of the largest extant collections of juvenilia by any English writer. At 15, she became ill, suffering intense head and spinal pain for the rest of her life. Later in life, she also developed lung problems, possibly tuberculosis. She took laudanum for the pain from an early age, which is likely to have contributed to her frail health. In the 1840s, Elizabeth was introduced to literary society through her distant cousin and patron John Kenyon. Her first adult collection of poems was published in 1838, and she wrote prolifically from 1841 to 1844, producing poetry, translation, and prose. She campaigned for the abolition of slavery, and her work helped influence reform in child labour legislation. Her prolific output made her a rival to Tennyson as a candidate for poet laureate on the death of Wordsworth. Elizabeth's volume Poems (1844) brought her great success, attracting the admiration of the writer Robert Browning. Their correspondence, courtship, and marriage were carried out in secret, for fear of her father's disapproval. Following the wedding, she was indeed disinherited by her father. In 1846, the couple moved to Italy, where she lived for the rest of her life. Elizabeth died in Florence in 1861. A collection of her later poems were published by her husband shortly after her death. They had a son, known as "Pen" (Robert Barrett, 1849–1912). Pen devoted himself to painting until his eyesight began to fail later in life. He also built a large collection of manuscripts and memorabilia of his parents, but because he died intestate, it was sold by public auction to various bidders and then scattered upon his death. The Armstrong Browning Library has recovered some of his collection, and it now houses the world's largest collection of Browning memorabilia. Elizabeth's work had a major influence on prominent writers of the day, including the American poets Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson. She is remembered for such poems as "How Do I Love Thee?" (Sonnet 43, 1845) and Aurora Leigh (1856). Life and career Family background Some of Elizabeth Barrett's family had lived in Jamaica since 1655. Their wealth derived mainly from slave labour from their plantations in the Caribbean. Edward Barrett (1734–1798) was owner of 10,000 acres (40 km2) in the estates of Cinnamon Hill, Cornwall, Cambridge, and Oxford in northern Jamaica. Elizabeth's maternal grandfather owned sugar plantations farmed by slaves they bought from Africa, mills, glassworks, and ships that traded between Jamaica and Newcastle in the United Kingdom. The family wished to hand down their name, stipulating that Barrett always should be held as a surname. In some cases, inheritance was given on condition that the name was used by the beneficiary; the English gentry and "squirearchy" had long encouraged this sort of name changing. Given this strong tradition, Elizabeth used "Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett" on legal documents, and before she was married, she often signed herself "Elizabeth Barrett Barrett" or "EBB" (initials which she was able to keep after her wedding). Elizabeth's father chose to raise his family in England, and his business enterprises remained in Jamaica. Elizabeth's mother, Mary Graham Clarke, also owned plantations farmed by enslaved people in the British West Indies. Early life Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett was born on (it is supposed) 6 March 1806 in Coxhoe Hall, between the villages of Coxhoe and Kelloe in County Durham, England. Her parents were Edward Barrett Moulton-Barrett and Mary Graham Clarke. However, it has been suggested that, when she was christened on 9 March, she was already three or four months old, and that this was concealed because her parents had married only on 14 May 1805. Although she had already been baptised by a family friend in that first week of her life, she was baptised again, more publicly, on 10 February 1808 at Kelloe parish church, at the same time as her younger brother, Edward (known as Bro). He had been born in June 1807, only 15 months after Elizabeth's stated date of birth. A private christening might seem unlikely for a family of standing, and while Bro's birth was celebrated with a holiday on the family's Caribbean plantations, Elizabeth's was not. Elizabeth was the eldest of 12 children (eight boys and four girls). Eleven lived to adulthood; one daughter died at the age of 3, when Elizabeth was 8. The children all had nicknames: Elizabeth was Ba. She rode her pony, went for family walks and picnics, socialised with other county families, and participated in home theatrical productions. Unlike her siblings, she immersed herself in books as often as she could get away from the social rituals of her family. In 1809, the family moved to Hope End, a 500-acre (200 ha) estate near the Malvern Hills in Ledbury, Herefordshire. Her father converted the Georgian house into stables and built a mansion of opulent Turkish design, which his wife described as something from the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. The interior's brass balustrades, mahogany doors inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and finely carved fireplaces were eventually complemented by lavish landscaping: ponds, grottos, kiosks, an ice house, a hothouse, and a subterranean passage from house to gardens. Her time at Hope End inspired her in later life to write Aurora Leigh (1856), her most ambitious work, which went through more than 20 editions by 1900, but none from 1905 to 1978. She was educated at home and tutored by Daniel McSwiney with her oldest brother. She began writing verses at the age of four. During the Hope End period, she was an intensely studious, precocious child. She claimed that she was reading novels at age 6, having been entranced by Pope's translations of Homer at age 8, studying Greek at age 10, and writing her own Homeric epic The Battle of Marathon: A Poem at age 11. In 1820, Mr Barrett privately published The Battle of Marathon, an epic-style poem, but all copies remained within the family. Her mother compiled the child's poetry into collections of "Poems by Elizabeth B. Barrett". Her father called her the "Poet Laureate of Hope End" and encouraged her work. The result is one of the larger collections of juvenilia of any English writer. Mary Russell Mitford described the young Elizabeth at this time as having "a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on each side of a most expressive face; large, tender eyes, richly fringed .... Discover the Elizabeth Brown popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Elizabeth Brown books.