About the Book
The Battle of Marathon [1820]
Barrett Browning's first known poem was written at the age of six or eight, "On the Cruelty of Forcement to Man." The manuscript is currently in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library; the exact date is controversial because the "2" in the date 1812 is written over something else that is scratched out. As a present for her fourteenth birthday her father underwrote the publication of her long Homeric poem entitled The Battle of Marathon (1820). Her first independent publication was "Stanzas Excited by Reflections on the Present State of Greece" in The New Monthly Magazine of May 1821; this was followed in the same publication two months later by "Thoughts Awakened by Contemplating a Piece of the Palm which Grows on the Summit of the Acropolis at Athens."[2]
Her first collection of poems, An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems, was published in 1826.[6] Its publication drew the attention of a blind scholar of the Greek language, Hugh Stuart Boyd, and that of another Greek scholar, Uvedale Price, with whom she maintained a sustained scholarly correspondence. Among other neighbours was Mrs. James Martin from Colwall, with whom she also corresponded throughout her life. Later, at Boyd's suggestion, she translated Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound (published in 1833; retranslated in 1850). During their friendship Barrett studied Greek literature, including Homer, Pindar and Aristophanes.
In 1824, a lawsuit about the estate in Jamaica had been decided in favour of their cousin, precipitating the family's financial decline. At about age 20 Barrett Browning began to battle with a lifelong illness, which the medical science of the time was unable to diagnose. She began to take morphine for the pain and eventually became addicted to the drug. This illness caused her to be frail and weak.[2] Mary Russell Mitford described the young Barrett Browning at this time, as having "a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on each side of a most expressive face; large, tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, and a smile like a sunbeam." Anne Thackeray Ritchie described her as being "very small and brown" with big, exotic eyes and an overgenerous mouth.
About the Author
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Poetess, was the daughter of Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett, who assumed the last name on succeeding to the estates of his grandfather in Jamaica. She was born at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, but spent her youth at Hope End, near Great Malvern. While still a child she showed her gift, and her father published 50 copies of a juvenile epic, on the Battle of Marathon. She was educated at home, but owed her profound knowledge of Greek and much mental stimulus to her early friendship with the blind scholar, Hugh Stuart Boyd, who was a neighbour. At the age of 15 she met with an injury to her spine which confined her to a recumbent position for several years, and from the effects of which she never fully recovered. In 1826 she published anonymously An Essay on Mind and Other Poems. Shortly afterwards the abolition of slavery, of which he had been a disinterested supporter, considerably reduced Mr. B.’s means: he accordingly disposed of his estate and removed with his family first to Sidmouth and afterwards to London. At the former Miss B. wrote Prometheus Bound (1835). After her removal to London she fell into delicate health, her lungs being threatened. This did not, however, interfere with her literary labours, and she contributed to various periodicals The Romaunt of Margaret, The Romaunt of the Page, The Poet’s Vow, and other pieces. In 1838 appeared The Seraphim and Other Poems (including “Cowper’s Grave.”)
