'How do I love thee?' Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806-61 14th February - 5th April 2006
Press View 14th February 2006 at 10.30am
On 14th February 2006, 'How do I love thee?' Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806-61, opens at the British Library. This exhibition, drawing on manuscript and printed items, photographs and memorabilia from the British Library and the collection of rarely seen and important material relating to the Brownings and their circle at Eton College, celebrates the bicentenary of her birth on 6th March 1806.
An early feminist, the first woman to be considered for the post of Poet Laureate, and a brilliant, incisive writer of progressive social and political ideas, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a radical figure. Yet for many she remains the reclusive 'invalid of Wimpole Street ' and the victim of a repressive Victorian father. This exhibition traces her life from her happy, precocious childhood amidst her large family in Herefordshire - where she studied Greek and published her first poems - to her London years of declining health and growing literary reputation, her burgeoning love for her fellow poet Robert Browning, their secret marriage and escape to a new and intensely fulfilling life in Italy.
Opening with Elizabeth's early years at 'Hope End', in Herefordshire, the exhibition contains examples of her early poems and other written works. High spirited, ambitious and very intelligent, Elizabeth was educated at home. At six she was learning French and reading novels, at eight immersed in translations of Homer, and at eleven studying Greek, writing short novels, plays and poetry. A manuscript of an early poem Leila, written when she was sixteen, and the later ambitious poem An Essay on Mind are displayed with her first published, work, The Battle of Marathon, privately printed at her father's expense in 1820. Her admiring father declared her 'the Poet Laureate of Hope End'. Also on display are a letter written to Elizabeth to her mother aged six and a cast list for a family play, with two hand-drawn tickets.
After the death of her mother and a period of illness Elizabeth and her family moved to 50 Wimpole Street , London in 1838 where her poetry collection The Seraphim was published in June of the same year. The manuscript for The Seraphim is on display, together with a watercolour of Elizabeth and her siblings by her brother Alfred and a handmade Valentine's card drawn by Elizabeth and her sisters.
Elizabeth's relationship with Robert Browning began in early January 1845. Their first meeting took place on 20 th May in Elizabeth's Wimpole Street room and as their affection and intimacy grew so too did the correspondence between them. Elizabeth began secretly to write her famous Sonnets from the Portuguese - a series of poems celebrating her growing love for Robert - the manuscript of which will be open at the poem How do I Love Thee? The exhibition also contains a letter from Elizabeth to her close friend Mary Minto which gives a cryptic hint of a planned elopement with Robert. Following advice from her doctor and despite her father's disapproval, Elizabeth decided to travel to Italy in 1846. She and Robert were secretly married on 26 th September and soon afterwards fled to Italy, accompanied by Elizabeth's maid Wilson and her beloved spaniel, Flush.
Elizabeth reached Italy in October, following a honeymoon which she described as 'living in a dream'. In March 1849 she gave birth to a son, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, always known by his childhood nickname, 'Pen'. By this time the family were living in Casa Guidi, Florence. Account books and the family address book showing Rossetti and Ruskin, among many other contacts, are on display. A letter in which Elizabeth writes about Flush's fleas and a letter she wrote to Robert once married, about Pen's illness, give a touching insight into their family life. A bronze cast of their clasped hands and a letter to Mary Minto in which Elizabeth writes ".I shall always be happier as a wife than as a mother." reveal the continuing happiness of her marriage.
During the final years of her life Elizabeth went on to create a new kind of poetry. The exhibition contains her manuscript for The Runaway Slave - influenced by her feelings about her family background as slave-holders in Jamaica - as well as the manuscript for Casa Guidi Windows, a lyrical poem about the birth of a nation, interspersed with reflections on motherhood. A first edition of her novel-poem Aurora Leigh, addressing the issues of women's rights to education and work, is also included along with the manuscript, in Robert's hand, of North and South, her final poem. Elizabeth fell ill in late 1860 and died in her husband's arms at Casa Guidi in the early morning of 29 th June 1861. In a letter to his sister, included in the exhibition, Robert writes that her death has 'taken the life from my life'. He died on a visit to Venice in 1889.
For further information or images, contact Victoria Main at the British Library Press Office: +44 (0)20 7412 7112 or Victoria.Main@bl.uk.
Notes for Editors
The British Library is the national Library of the United Kingdom. It provides world class information services to the academic, business, research and scientific communities and offers unparalleled access to the world's largest and most comprehensive research collection. Further information is available on the Library's website at www.bl.uk.
The Browning Society was formed in 1969 to provide a focus for contemporary interest in Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The Society arranges an annual programme of lectures and visits in London and elsewhere, as well as publishing Browning Society Notes. The aims of the Society are to widen the appreciation and understanding of the poetry of the Brownings, and other Victorian writers and poets, and to collect items of literary and biographical interest. www.browningsociety.org.