SOURCE: Waddington, Patrick. “Russian Variations on an English Theme: The Crying Children of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.” Studies in Browning and His Circle 21 (November 1997): 95-115.

In the following essay, Waddington discusses Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem on child labor, “The Cry of the Children,” and its considerable influence in Russia where it inspired imitations by several Russian literary figures.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Russian fame preceded that of her husband, but afterwards declined. In an article of 1860 the eminent critic A. V. Druzhinin casually referred to her as a ‘celebrated name’ in English letters.¹ As late as 1892, after Robert's death, another authority could still claim that his own reputation in Russia was strengthened by Elizabeth's, rather than the other way about. ‘In Browning she found a kindred spirit,’ we read, ‘and they helped each other in their poetic labours, yet she wrote more plainly and accessibly and her poems … were thus...