1806: EB was born on March 6, probably at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, England (the residence of her father and mother for some time after their marriage in 1805.)

Her father was Edward Moulton Barrett (who added the Barrett surname on the death of his maternal grandfather, whose estates in Jamaica he inherited).

EB’s mother was Mary Graham-Clarke, daughter of J. Graham-Clarke of Fenham Hall, Newcastle-on Tyne.

1808: EB was christened on February 10, 1808, leading to some later confusion as to her actual birth date and age.

At about this time, Edward Moulton Barrett, quite rich due to the estates in Jamaica, bought 500 acres at Hope End (a “hope” is an enclosed valley), near the Malvern Hills; EB was still an infant. He had a splendid new mansion built there, in the “Turkish style.” EB enjoyed an active, largely happy childhood at Hope End.

EB was the eldest of 11 surviving children (one died in infancy); she lived at Hope End until she was 26 years old.

She began writing at a very early age, creating short plays for herself, her brother Edward (“Bro”, born 1807), sister Henrietta (born 1809) and other siblings to perform.

ca. 1812: Determined to become a poet, the precocious EB read widely in English literature, and began at six or seven to study French, Latin and Greek. Delighting in learning, she ignored the tradition that the “learned languages” were reserved for boys. Her parents encouraged her efforts.

1818: EB, at twelve, was writing short novels and plays, translating, and experimenting with different forms of poetry.

1820: EB wrote “The Battle of Marathon,” a long poem on the ancient war between the Greeks and Persians. Her father had the poem privately printed for her fourteenth birthday.

1821: In April all three of the Barrett sisters, EB, Henrietta and Arabel (born 1813) became ill with headaches and convulsions. Henrietta and Arabel quickly recovered; EB did not. In July of that year EB also developed measles; she was sent to recover at the Spa Hotel, Gloucester. She stayed there for ten months while the doctors disagreed on diagnoses and treatment. She was forced to rest and was prescribed the alcoholic tincture of opium poppies, laudanum. At that time, it was not understood how addictive laudanum was.

Early 1820’s: Despite her health problems, EB continued to write poetry, much of which was published in periodicals.

1824: The Goodin-Barretts (cousins of Edward Moulton-Barrett) successfully sued for ownership of the estates and slaves in Jamaica. The Moulton-Barretts remained wealthy but not as extraordinarily wealthy as they had been.

1825, spring: EB completed the ambitious poem “An Essay on Mind.”  It and other of her poems were published in 1826 to critical acclaim.

1832: EB’s father had to sell Hope End.

1832, August: The Moulton-Barretts moved to Sidmouth on the Devon coast.

1835: The family moved to London, to 74 Gloucester Place.

1836, May:  EB met fellow writer Mary Russell Mitford and, despite Mitford’s being 18 years older, they became good friends.

1837, autumn: EB’s health began to decline once more. Her father sent her to Torquay to recover. Her beloved brother Edward (“Bro”) accompanied her.

1838: The Moulton-Barretts moved to 50 Wimpole Street in April.

1838: (EB continued to publish widely). Her collection The Seraphim and Other Poems was published in this year. Her reputation as a fine poet continued to develop.

1840, July: “Bro”, three friends and a boatman went sailing on Tor Bay in perfect conditions and were drowned. EB was seriously ill for several months. Mary Russell Mitford gave her Flush, a cocker spaniel and son of Mitford’s dog of the same name.

1841, autumn: EB finally convinced her father to let her return to Wimpole Street by easy stages. Despite her frailty, she continued to write poems and prose studies.

1842: EB produced two extensive, intelligent prose studies–Some Account of the Greek Christian Poets and The Book of the Poets (English poets since the middle ages).

1843: EB’s health began to improve steadily.

1844: EB’s two-volume Poems was published to critical acclaim and general popularity. Robert Browning read and was enthusiastic about EB’s collection of poems. This and the encouragement of John Kenyon led him to write his first letter to EB (January 1845).

1845, May 20: EB and RB finally met in her rooms at Wimpole Street– to discuss poetry. Over the next 20 months, RB visited more than 90 times, and the two poets exchanged 574 letters.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime.^[1] A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death. Her Sonnets from the Portuguese remain well-known. Scholarly interest in her life and poetry has undergone a great resurgence in the last 30 to 40 years.
 

Why is an original marble bust of John Kenyon, Esq., displayed in Armstrong Browning’s Entrance Foyer with busts of Robert, Elizabeth and Robert Barrett Browning (“Pen”)?

John Kenyon (1784-1856), a distant cousin of Elizabeth’s and  friend of both Elizabeth and Robert, was destined to play an important role in their lives both individually and as a couple. John Kenyon was born in Jamaica, son of a wealthy landowner, but came to England as a boy. His wealth and his noted generosity and kindliness made him an eminent patron of the literary establishment during the second quarter of the 19th century. Kenyon was, in fact, best known for his friendships with many eminent literary men and women. He was, as well, a poet who published some volumes of minor verses.

John Kenyon introduced Eilzabeth to the important literary figures of the time, among them William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle, and Mary Russell Mitford, who was to become a good friend.

In 1841,  the Barrett family moved to 50 Wimpole Street in London. By this time, Elizabeth’s health had become fragile and she spent most of her time in her rooms upstairs, seeing only family, her dog, Flush–and John Kenyon. Although frail, she continued to write and publish her poetry. She became so popular that Robert Browning, six years her junior and much less well-known at the time, became enamored of her poetry. On her part,she was already well-acquainted with Browning’s few published works.

In 1844 Barrett’s collection “Poems” was published and became a tremendous popular success. Robert raved about the poems in the presence of John Kenyon and Kenyon urged him to write to her and tell her how he felt. Robert did, indeed, write and his praise was fulsome. In fact, his enthusiasm led him to startle Elizabeth somewhat–at that point they had never met: “I do, as I say, love these Books with all my heart–and I love you, too.”  When Robert expressed a desire  to meet her, through the agency of John Kenyon, she refused–several times. She could not believe the robust Browning really wanted to meet her. Finally, though, she relented and Kenyon arranged for Browning to meet Elizabeth on May 20, 1845.

Robert met Elizabeth in her rooms at Wimpole Street and so began one of the most famous courtships in literature. During the twenty months of the courtship, the two met regularly and exchanged 574 letters as well. During this period, too, Elizabeth secretly wrote the works that became her most famous: A cycle of 44 sonnets celebrating her growing love for Robert; later to be given the title “Sonnets from the Portuguese.”   The courtship and their marriage at St. Marylebone parish church on September 12, 1846 were kept secret from her father, Edward Moulton-Barrett, who had forbidden his 11 children to marry. When he did learn of their elopement he disinherited Elizabeth.

John Kenyon remained quite close to Robert and Elizabeth’s  for the remainder of his life. At the birth of their only child, Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning (nicknamed, Pen), Kenyon supplemented the poets’ modest income with the gift of 100 pounds a year.  At his death, in1856, Kenyon bequeathed 11,000 pounds to Robert and Elizabeth.

Elizabeth completed Aurora Leigh, her most ambitious work, while she and Robert were staying with John Kenyon. Elizabeth dedicated the verse-novel to Kenyon:

“The words  ‘cousin’ and ‘friend’ are constantly recurring in this poem, the last pages of which have been finished under the hospitality of your roof, my own dearest cousin and friend…

Ending, therefore, and preparing once more to quit England, I leave in your hands this book, the most mature of my works, and the one into which my highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered; that as, through my various efforts in literature and steps in life, you have believed in me, borne with me, and been generous to me , far beyond the common uses of mere relationship  or sympathy of mind, so you may kindly accept, in sight of the public, this poor sign of esteem, gratitude, and affection, from          Your unforgetting EBB

The life-sized head and shoulders bust of Kenyon at 57 was done by Thomas Crawford in 1841. It eventually belonged to the Brownings. A generous donor gave it to the Browning Collection in 1944.

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Robert Browning and Charles Dickens were both born in 1812: Dickens on the 7th of February and Browning on the 7th of May of that year. Browning and Dickens became good friends. The first paragraph of an article in Wikipedia says this about Browning: “…an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.” The first paragraph of the Wikipedia article on Charles Dickens says: “…an English writer and social critic who is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period and the creator of some of the world’s most memorable fictional characters. During his lifetime Dickens’s works enjoyed unprecedented popularity and fame, and by the twentieth century his literary genius was fully recognized by critics and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to enjoy an enduring popularity among the general reading public.”

For more information on the worldwide celebration of Dickens’ life, novels, short stories, films of Dickens novels, and festivals and outdoor events dealing with Dickens and his works, go to the Dickens 2012 web site: www.dickens2012.org/

“God bless us, every one” (Tiny Tim, A Christmas Carol)

The Guardian Angel window: One of the three windows placed in the Browning Room in 1924.

The Pied Piper window: Placed in the Browning Room (1924)

How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix: One of the three oldest stained glass windows in the Library & Museum: Placed in the Browning Room in 1924.

These three windows, placed in The Browning Room of the old Main Library, began the tradition of stained glass windows in the ABL&M. There are now 62 stained glass windows in the building, most of which show scenes suggested by  Robert Browning’s poems..The Elizabeth Barrett Browning Salon has five windows representing five of her “Sonnets from the Portuguese.”

Celebratons honoring the bi-centennial of Robert Browning’s birth are taking place on each side of the Atlantic. In late June, a conference sponsored by the Browning Society of London focused on a particular aspect of Browning’s work–the dramatic monologue. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, the following definition is offered.

M. H. Abrams, one of the general editors of the Norton Anthology of English Literature and a respected American critic known especially for work on Romanticism, lists three features of the dramatic monologue as it applies to poetry:

1. A single person, who is clearly not the poet, utters the speech that makes up the whole of the poem, in a specific situation at a critical moment.

2. This person addresses and interacts with one or more people; but we know of the auditors’ presence, and what they say or do, only from clues in the discourse of the single speaker.

3. The main principle controlling the poet’s choice and formulation of what the lyric speaker says is to reveal to the  reader, in a way that enhances its interest, the speaker’s temperament and chararcter

Robert Browning is considered to be the perfecter of the dramatic monologue, which had its heyday in the Victorian Period. Other Victorian poets to produce one or more dramatic monologues include Alfred Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Matthew Arnold, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. None, however, produced as many, or as striking, dramatic monologues as Robert Browning. A famous example is Browning’s “My Last Duchess.” Notice how the Duke’s character is revealed by what he says:

“MY LAST DUCHESS”

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say “Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat”: such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
—E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,

Other of Browning’s brief dramatic monologues include “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister,” “The Laboratory” and “Porphyria’s Lover.” Several important longer dramatic monologues, which appeared in the poet’s collection Men and Women are “Fra Lippo Lippi,” “Bishop Blougram’s Apology,” and “Andrea del Sarto.” His crowning achievement in the style are the dramatic monologues he wrote for his acknowledged masterwork The Ring and the Book, published in four installments in 1868-1869.

The Ring and the Book, an epic-length poem of 21,000 lines, is based on the documents from a Roman murder trial of 1698. From this material Browning created a verse-novel that includes twelve “Books,” ten of which are dramatic monologues offering the differing perspectives of narrators involved in the case. The one accused of murder, an impoverished nobleman named Count Guido Franceschini, speaks twice. The first and twelfth books are spoken by the poet himself. The Ring and the Book has been called a tour de force of dramatic poetry and was a great success both commercially and critically.

Dallas Morning News, 5/11/12

“Texas and literature: It may not be a word combination that leaps into most minds — like Texas and cowboys or Texas and bluebonnets. But Texas has spawned writers of its own, nurtured non-native writers smart enough to have moved here, and played host to those just passing through.”

Waco

“Armstrong Browning Library & Museum: The ABL&M, on the Baylor University campus, is a place especially for romantics: a museum and library devoted to Victorian poets Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It houses what the university describes as the world’s largest collection of books, manuscripts and memorabilia pertaining to the Brownings. The late Dr. A. J. Armstrong, head of Baylor’s English department [from 1912 to 1952], collected many of the items himself. Opened in December 1951, the building itself is an architectural treasure. You’ll see many of the Brownings’ personal items, such as jewelry, furniture and art. The library is also a research center for scholars.” [Brownings and Victorian Period research]

“Corner of Speight and 8th Street on the Baylor campus; Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.; closed Sunday. Free. 254-710-3566; www.browninglibrary.org ”

Other institutions and collections described include: Austin, O Henry House and Museum; General Land Office Building; Lorenzo de Zavala State Archive and Library Building; San Antonio, Menger Hotel; Kyle, Katherine Ann Porter Literary Center; San Marcos, Wittliff Collections of Texas State University (Southwestern Writers Collection; Gallery of Southwestern and Mexican Photography, etc.); Abilene, National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature; Archer City, Booked Up, Larry McMurtry’s huge used book store; Cross Plains, Robert E. Howard House (creator of Conan the Barbarian) and Howard Collection in Cross Plains Library.