While Barrett Browning is best known these days for Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850), a series of love poems to her husband, we will focus on the epic novel-poem, Aurora Leigh, published in 1856 and read by Dickinson in the late 1850s-early 1860s. Many consider Barrett Browning to be Dickinson’s most important and beloved literary foremother.Įlizabeth Barrett Browning We will explore what drew Dickinson to Barrett Browning, from a literary as well as a personal perspective.

If you touch her Grave, put one hand on the Head for me – her unmentioned Mourner.ĭickinson knew that Bowles would try to visit the grave of this famous writer because he took two books with him on his tour: the Bible and Barrett Browning’s epic poem Aurora Leigh. This week we explore the influence of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) on Dickinson, occasioned by Dickinson's request in a letter to Samuel Bowles, who was traveling in Europe for his health, that The sonnets remain a testament to a love that seems rare and precious, and the truth of these beautiful poems lives on.Only three portraits hung in the corner bedroom of a very selective Emily Dickinson: Thomas Carlyle, George Eliot, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The Barrett-Brownings had a long and seemingly blissful marriage, with Elizabeth dying in Italy, in his arms, in 1861. The 13th sonnet - 'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways' - has become one of the world’s favourite love poems.īarrett-Browning captures all the joy and innocence of a passionate love as well as the doubt and fear - she was amazed that Browning, six years her junior and full of health and vigour, could love her as much as he professed to. Written as petrarchan sonnets over the two years following their secret marriage and flight to Italy, these are some of the best loved and most moving love poems ever written. The love that burgeons from this first visit is chronicled in Sonnets from the Portuguese - Browning called her his 'Portuguese' in reference to her dark skin and almost black hair. The poems prompt a letter from Robert Browning in praise of her work, which so touches her that she agrees to let him into her voluntary seclusion. It begins in 1844 with Elizabeth Barrett, closeted in her room for five years through ill health and forbidden from marrying by her nonconformist father, publishing the most recent of her highly successful literary works, a collection of poetry.

The love affair between Elizabeth Barrett-Browning and Robert Browning is one of the most famous in literature.

Sonnets from the portuguese 21