by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Born in 1806 in County Durham, England, Elizabeth Moulton-Barrett was the eldest of 11 surviving children. Although, like most young girls of the time, she had no formal schooling, she shared a tutor with the brother closest to her in age, studying Latin and Greek. Elizabeth Barrett furthered her education by extensive readings in history, philosophy, and literature. She also began to compose poetry at an early age; The Battle of Marathon was privately printed by her father in 1820. In 1825 her poem “The Rose and the Zephyr” was published in the Literary Gazette, and the following year, a collection of poetry, An Essay on Mind with Other Poems, appeared in print. Over the next two decades, Elizabeth Barrett continued to write poems and essays, publishing several volumes, including Prometheus Bound and Miscellaneous Poems (1833), The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838), and Poems...