Browning was likely the first woman poet in England to be considered for the post of poet laureate, a reflection of her success in the battle against the marginalized status of "woman writer." Despite popularity and critical acclaim during her lifetime, scholars have tended to remember her as the passionate woman who left home to marry her young poet-lover rather than as the innovative poet who gave voice to women's private and intellectual desires. Browning wrote widely on political and social topics, and she produced some of the world's most famous love poetry in her Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850). She also penned the semi-autobiographical story of a female poet striving for literary success and an equal partnership in marriage; her verse novel Aurora Leigh (1856) has been hailed by feminist critics as a new model of poetry and of womanhood.

Biographical Information

Elizabeth Barrett was born March 6, 1806, into a...