Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Born in Durham, in 1806, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote The Battle of Marathon when she was only fourteen years old. Although her father supported her, by paying the printing fees for her An Essay on Mind (1826), he barred all twelve of his children from marrying. By thirty-nine years old, though, Elizabeth had begun a romance with Robert Browning. In the fall of 1846, the one-time invalid, eloped with the six-years-younger poet, and they moved to Casa Guide in Florence. There she wrote her famous Aurora Leigh. She reportedly died, amorously, in his arms in the summer of 1861.