Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Interesting Literature

The Best Elizabeth Barrett Browning Poems Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61) is less famous now as a poet in her own right, and more familiar as the wife of Robert Browning, whom she courted through a series of extraordinary love letters in the 1840s.

It was not always this way. Once upon a time, Robert Browning was the struggling obscure poet and Elizabeth Barrett Browning was the one who, upon Wordsworth’s death in 1850, was considered for the post of Poet Laureate. (In the end, Tennyson got the job.)

A Short Analysis of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers’, one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, is a fine love poem about her courtship and eventual marriage to her fellow poet, Robert Browning.

Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers
Plucked in the garden, all the summer through
And winter, and it seemed as if they grew
In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers,
So, in the like name of that love of ours,
Take back these thoughts which here unfolded too,
And which on warm and cold days I withdrew
From my heart’s ground. Indeed, those beds and bowers
Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue,
And wait thy weeding; yet here’s eglantine,
Here’s ivy!— take them, as I used to do
Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.
Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,
And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.

A Short Analysis of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘To Flush, My Dog’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘A dog is a man’s best friend’, they say. But one hopes that in this case, as the old jest has it, ‘man embraces woman’, and that what the anonymous author of this proverb had in mind was the close bond between dogs and humans, whether men or women. Flush, the name of the cocker spaniel belonging to Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61), was clearly a close friend of his poet-owner, and Barrett Browning penned this lovely poem about her beloved dog.

To Flush, My Dog

Loving friend, the gift of one,
Who, her own true faith, hath run,
Through thy lower nature;
Be my benediction said
With my hand upon thy head,
Gentle fellow-creature!

Like a lady’s ringlets brown,
Flow thy silken ears adown
Either side demurely,
Of thy silver-suited breast
Shining out from all the rest
Of thy body purely.

A Short Analysis of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.’ One of the most famous opening lines in all of English love poetry. Yet how much do we really know about this poem? Who can quote the second line, for instance? The poet who wrote this sonnet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, is now overshadowed by the work of her husband, Robert Browning, so it’s worth delving a little deeper into this love poem, by way of close textual analysis.

A Very Short Biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61) was one of the most popular poets of the Victorian era, and although her achievement is now eclipsed by that of the man she married in 1846, she was the more popular poet of the two of them during her lifetime and only narrowly lost out to Tennyson for the position of Poet Laureate in 1850. Here we offer a very short biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, taking in her secret elopement, her Victorian verse epic, and other highlights from her interesting life and work.