诗人Elizabeth Barrett Browning简介：

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************************************************************************* Elizabeth Barrett Browning From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Elizabeth Barrett Browning (March 6, 1806 – June 29, 1861) was one of the most respected poets of the Victorian era. Early life Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett was born March 6, 1806, in Coxhoe Hall, Durham, England. In 1809, her father Edward, having made most of his considerable fortune from Jamaican sugar plantations which he inherited, bought "Hope End", a 500-acre (2.0 km2) estate near the Malvern Hills in Ledbury, Herefordshire, England. Elizabeth was the eldest of Edward and his wife Mary Graham-Clarke, who had 12 children. Elizabeth was educated at home, attending lessons with her brother's tutor and was consequently well educated for a girl of that time. Her first poem on record is from the age of six or eight. The manuscript is currently in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, but the exact date is doubtful because the "2" in the date 1812 is written over something else that is scratched out. A long Homeric poem titled The Battle of Marathon was published when she was fourteen, her father paying for its publication. Barrett later referred to her first literary attempt as, "Pope's Homer done over again, or rather undone." During her teen years, she read the principal Greek and Latin authors and Dante's Inferno in their original languages. Her appetite for knowledge led her to learn Hebrew and read the Old Testament from beginning to end. By the age of twelve, she had written an "epic" poem consisting of four books of rhyming couplets. In 1838, The Seraphim and Other Poems appeared, the first volume of Elizabeth's mature poetry to appear under her own name. That same year her health forced her to move to Torquay, on the Devonshire coast. Her favorite brother Edward went along with her. The subsequent death of her brother, Edward, who drowned in a sailing accident at Torquay in 1840, had a serious effect on her already fragile health. When she returned to Wimpole Street, she became an invalid and a recluse, spending most of the next five years in her bedroom, seeing only one or two people other than her immediate family. Robert Browning During Elizabeth's confinement at Wimpole Street, one of the only people besides her immediate family whom she saw was John Kenyon, a wealthy and convivial friend of the arts. Her 1844 Poems made her one of the most popular writers in the land and inspired Robert Browning to write to her, telling her how much he loved her poems. Kenyon arranged for Browning to meet her in May 1845, and so began one of the most famous courtships in literature. Their courtship and marriage, owing to her delicate health and the extraordinary objections made by Mr. Barrett to the marriage of any of his children, were carried out secretly. Six years his elder and an invalid, she could not believe that the vigorous and worldly Browning really loved her as much as he professed to, and her doubts are expressed in the Sonnets from the Portuguese which she wrote over the next two years. Love conquered all, however, and, after a private marriage at St. Marylebone Parish Church, Browning imitated his hero Shelley by spiriting his beloved off to Italy in August 1846, which became her home almost continuously until her death. Elizabeth's loyal nurse, Wilson, who witnessed the marriage at the church, accompanied the couple to Italy and became at service to them. Mr. Barrett disinherited Elizabeth, as he did for each of his children who married. As Elizabeth had inherited some money of her own, the Brownings were reasonably comfortable in Italy, and the union proved happy. Elizabeth grew stronger, and, in 1849, at the age of 43, she gave birth to a son, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, called Pen. He later married but had no children, so there are no direct descendants of the poets. At Browning's insistence, the second edition of her Poems included her love sonnets. These increased her popularity and high critical regard so that she cemented her position as favourite Victorian poetess. On William Wordsworth's death in 1850, she was a serious contender to become Poet Laureate, but the position went to Tennyson. The Brownings settled in Florence, where she wrote Casa Guidi Windows (1851) under the inspiration of the Tuscan struggle for liberty, for which she and her hu*****and were sympathisers. In Florence, she became close friends to British-born poets Isabella Blagden and Theodosia Garrow Trollope. The verse-novel Aurora Leigh, her most ambitious and perhaps the most popular of her longer poems, appeared in 1856. It is the story of a woman writer making her way in life, balancing work and love. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Barrett_Browning