Virginia Woolf called it 'a masterpiece in embryo'. 'I love her for her smile-her look-her wayīarrett Browning's long narrative poem Aurora Leigh is the story of the eponymous heroine's life, and is, according to its author, 'the one into which my highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered'. If thou must love me, let it be for nought

'A writer in Fraser's magazine immediately appreciated their distinctive quality: 'From the Portuguese they may be: but their life and earnestness must prove Mrs Browning either to be the most perfect of all known translators, or to have quickened with her own spirit the framework of another's thought, and then modestly declined the honour which was really her own'.' According to the Poetry Foundation, the title Sonnets from the Portuguese was selected the Brownings 'in order to make it appear that the poems had no biographical significance … as if they were translations'. Here's another love poem from the Portuguese cycle, too, 14. My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight F I love thee to the depth and breadth and height Although by now an invalid she seemed insecure of the love of the vigorous Robert but continued to write and publish poetry as diverse as love sonnets and political pieces before succumbing to death in 1861.'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. To him she wrote and dedicated one of her greatest works Sonnets from the Portuguese and they went to live in Italy in 1846. In 1844 she was introduced to the younger Robert Browning who was a great admirer of her work and began a secret courtship and thence to marriage.

Her poems against slavery chronicled her abhorrence of the basis of the family wealth. Despite this she continued to write and became increasingly popular both in England and in the United States.

Shortly thereafter Elizabeth became afflicted with an unknown disease and became addicted to morphine. However by age 20 the family’s fortunes were to decline, but never below comfortable, after losing a lawsuit over their plantations. This wealth allowed her to publish poems from an early age. Family wealth was derived from sugar plantations manned by slaves in Jamaica and enabling them to also purchase a 500 acre estate in Herefordshire. Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett was born on 6 March 1806, in Coxhoe Hall, County Durham, the eldest of twelve children.

Browning sonnets from the portuguese