Elizabeth Barrett, born at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, England in 1806. Elizabeth was the oldest of twelve children and the first in her family to be born in England in over two hundred years.

By the age of twelve she had written her first "epic" poem. It consisted of four books of rhyming couplets. Two years later she developed a lung ailment that plagued her for the rest of her life.

Gaining notoriety for her work in the 1830's, Elizabeth continued to live in her father's London house under his tyrannical rule. She continued writing, however, and in 1844 produced a collection entitled simply Poems. This volume gained the attention of poet Robert Browning, whose work Elizabeth had praised in one of her poems, and he wrote her a letter.

Elizabeth and Robert, who was six years her junior, exchanged 574 letters over the next twenty months. In 1846, the couple eloped and settled in Florence, Italy, where Elizabeth's health improved and she bore a son, Robert Wideman Browning.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning died in Florence, Italy, on June 29, 1861.