Robert, Elizabeth, and Pen Browning

Robert, Elizabeth, and Pen Browning

Browning and his poet wife, with their son Robert on a trip through the Grand Canal. In 1845, Browning met the poet Elizabeth Barrett, six years his elder, who lived as a semi-invalid in her father's house in London. They began regularly corresponding and gradually a romance developed between them, leading to their marriage and journey to Italy (for Elizabeth's health) in 1846. The marriage was initially secret because Elizabeth's domineering father disapproved of marriage for any of his children. Mr. Barrett disinherited Elizabeth, as he did for each of his children who married: "The Mrs. Browning of popular imagination was a sweet, innocent young woman who suffered endless cruelties at the hands of a tyrannical papa but who nonetheless had the good fortune to fall in love with a dashing and handsome poet named Robert Browning." At her husband's insistence, the second edition of Elizabeth's Poems included her love sonnets. The book increased her popularity and high critical regard, cementing her position as an eminent Victorian poet. From the time of their marriage and until Elizabeth's death, the Brownings lived in Italy. Their only child, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, nicknamed "Pen", was born in 1849.

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3062 x 4500 px | 39.4 MB

25.9 x 38.1 cm | 10.2 x 15.0 in (300 dpi)