Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) was one of the most prominent, influential, and widely admired poets of the Victorian era. A classical prodigy who read Homer in the original Greek at age eight, she was confined to her bedroom in Wimpole Street, London, by spinal injury and lung illness under the tyrannical authority of her father.

Her 1844 Poems brought her international fame and led to a famous correspondence with Robert Browning, culminating in their secret marriage and elopement to Florence in 1846. Her collection Sonnets from the Portuguese contains some of the greatest romantic poetry in English, including Sonnet 43 ('How do I love thee? Let me count the ways'). In her feminist verse novel Aurora Leigh and political poems Casa Guidi Windows, she championed women's emancipation, child labor reform, and Italian national independence.