Namangan davlat universiteti ingliz filologiyasi fakulteti amaliy ingliz tili kafedrasi

Elizabeth Barrett Browning 
(6 March 1806 – 29 June 1861) was one of the most 
prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and 
the United States during her lifetime. She was educated at home and attended lessons with her 
brothers’ tutor. She writes that at six she was reading novels, and at eight she was entranced by 
Pope’s translations of Homer; at ten she was studying Greek and writing her own Homeric epic The 
Battle of Marathon. Her parents encouraged her work, and she has one of the largest collections of 
juvenilia of any English writer. By 1821 she had read Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the 
Rights of Woman (1792), and she became a passionate supporter of Wollstonecraft’s ideas, 
particularly since she could not go to school as her brothers did despite her own brilliance. Between 
1841-4 Barrett Browning was prolific in poetry, translation and prose. Her poem “The Cry of the 
Children”, published in 1842 in Blackwoods, condemned child labor and helped bring about child 
labor reforms by rousing support for Lord Shaftesbury’s Ten Hours Bill (1844). Her 1844 volume 
Poems made her one of the most popular writers in the country at the time and inspired Robert 
Browning to write to her, telling her how much he loved her work. She grew to love Robert and 
eventually married him; her father then disinherited her, as he did each of his children who married. 
Her brothers considered Robert a lower class gold-digger and refused to see him. 
However, Elizabeth had some money of her own, and the couple were reasonably comfortable 
in Italy. Her most famous work, Sonnets From the Portugese, largely chronicles the period leading 
up to her 1846 marriage to Robert Browning. The collection was acclaimed and popular even in the 
poet’s lifetime and it remains so today; it contains the famous poem begins “How do I love thee? 
Let me count the ways…” She also published Aurora Leigh, an epic poem about a female writer 
making her way in life, balancing work and love. The writings depicted in this novel are based on 
similar, personal experiences that Elizabeth suffered through herself. Her works are widely 
available in English.