The Brownings, Their Life and Art

At its heart, this is a book about two souls finding each other against all odds. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the celebrated poet confined to her father's London home by chronic illness and patriarchal control, seemed destined for a life of quiet literary renown. Then came Robert Browning, younger, brash, already publishing ambitious verse that confused readers and critics alike. Their elopement in 1846 scandalized Victorian society, and their fifteen years together in Florence produced some of the most innovative poetry in the English language. Whiting writes with the perspective of someone who could see their legacy whole: Elizabeth's revolutionary novel-in-verse Aurora Leigh and Robert's dramatic monologues that reinvented what poetry could do. This is biography as love letter to creative partnership, capturing both the domestic intimacy of their Italian life and the seismic impact of two artists who refused to write alone.