Elizabeth Barrett Browning

BROWNING, Elizabeth Barrett Moulton (née Barrett). b. Coxhoe, near Durham, 6 March 1806; d. Florence, 30 June 1861. She was the daughter of a wealthy merchant family whose money had been made in the West Indies. The family moved to an estate at Ledbury, Herefordshire, in 1810. She was a precocious poet, whose first verses were published in the New Monthly Magazine in 1821, and whose first book, An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems, appeared in 1826. In 1832 the family moved to Sidmouth, Devon, and in 1835 to London. From 1837 they lived in Wimpole Street, and it was there that Elizabeth became ill. Sent to Torquay to recover, she lost her eldest brother Edward, who drowned in a boating...