Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The poems are love sonnets connected to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's relationship with Robert Browning. They were published in 1850, four years after the couple married and moved to Italy.

Sonnet 43 begins with the famous line about counting the ways of love. It is part of Sonnets from the Portuguese, a sequence that helped define Barrett Browning's public reputation as a Victorian love poet.

Aurora Leigh, published in 1856, is a long verse novel about a woman poet's artistic and social education. It mixes debates about gender, class, work, and art in Victorian England and Italy.

She moved to Italy with Robert Browning after their 1846 marriage, partly for health and partly to escape family opposition. Casa Guidi in Florence became one of the places most associated with her later life and writing.