[originaltext] The romance and marriage of Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Brown

The romance and marriage of Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning inspired some of the greatest love poems written in the English language.  Elizabeth, without a doubt the greatest woman poet of the Victorian period, was born in Durham County, England, in 1806. Her first important publication was The Seraphim and Other Poems which appeared in 1838.
    By 1843, she was so widely recognized that her name was suggested to replace the late Poet Laureate as the official national poet of England. In part because the ruler was a woman, there was great support for a movement to break with the tradition of a male Poet Laureate. Nevertheless, she lost the competition to William Wordsworth.
    A short time later, she married Robert Browning, himself a gifted poet, and they fled to Florence, Italy. A play, The Barrens of Wimpole Street, recounts their confrontation with Elizabeth’s father and their eventual elopement against his wishes.
    While living in Florence, their only son was born. A year later, in 1850, Elizabeth published her collected works, along with a volume of new poems entitled Sonnets from the Portuguese, so named because her husband often called her his "Portuguese". Aurora Leigh, her longest work, appeared in 1856, only five years before her death in Italy in 1861.