The Passions of Life Revealed Through Poetry

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning, poet, addict, recluse and part of one of life’s true love stories, used her poetry to explain her beliefs about life, love, religion, nature and, later in life, even politics. Through her sonnets, she could freely express and describe feelings and thoughts that were important to her. Elizabeth Barrett Browning experienced great love and loss in her life and she used these events as inspiration for her writings, poems and sonnets, especially Sonnets from the Portuguese, which are still popular and quoted today.

Elizabeth Barrett was born to Edward and Mary Moulton-Barrett on March 6th, 1806 in Durham, England. Elizabeth was the oldest of her parents’ twelve children.1 Her father’s successful Jamaican sugar plantations allowed the Barrett family to live a comfortable upper middle class life. When Elizabeth was three, her family bought a five hundred acre estate called Hope End, in Herefordshire, where she spent the next twenty-three years of her life.2

Elizabeth never went to school. This was also a common practice of the time, as it was not considered necessary for women to be educated. She received all her education at home where she read Paradise Lost and many Shakespearean plays all before the age of ten. She listened to the instruction that her brothers received from their tutors and used it to educate herself. As her childhood went on, she taught herself Hebrew so that she could read the Old Testament in the original version because of her passion for Christianity.3

When she was only thirteen, Elizabeth started her literary career by writing The Battle of Marathon, a book containing multiple epic poems, which her father had privately printed in 1820. In 1821, a...

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...rk: Online Classic Literature, Poems, and Quotes. Essays & Summaries. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. .

"Elizabeth Barrett Browning." Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. Web. 2 Feb. 2012. .

Liukkonen, Petri. "Elizabeth Browning." Www.kirjasto.sci.fi. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. .

Nicoll, W. Robertson, LL.D. The Religious Opinions of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. London: Privately Printed, 1896.

Parini, Jay. British Writers: Retrospective Supplement II. Boston, Charles Scribner’s Son, 2002.

"The Relationship of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning." The Victorian Web: An Overview. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. .

Scott-Kilvert, Ian. British Writers: Volume IV. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1981.

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