A Romantic Love Letter written by Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett Browning

…would I, if I could, supplant one of any of the affections that I know to have taken root in you - that great and solemn one, for instance. I feel that if I could get myself remade, as if turned to gold, I WOULD not even then desire to become more than the mere setting to that diamond you must always wear.

The regard and esteem you now give me, in this letter, and which I press to my heart and bow my head upon, is all I can take and all too embarrassing, using all my gratitude.

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Robert and Elizabeth Browning were a well known couple in Victorian literary circles. A strange match coming from very different backgrounds they eloped to get married after a lengthy exchange of letters to each other. Many of these letters still exist and we publish some of them see the links below. They later settled in Florence (where their son Robert Wiedemann Barrett was born).

Elizabeth Moulton Barrett (1806-61) was born in the north east of England (County Durham) the eldest of a family of 12. At the age of 32 the family moved from the open countryside to central London (50 Wimpole Street). Although an established and famous poet even before she came into first contact with Robert Browning she wrote her most famous love poems (Sonnets from the Portuguese) some four years after their marriage (see links below). Aurora Leigh (a love story written entirely in verse) written in 1857 was a huge success in many ways establishing Elizabeth as one of the best romantic poets of the era. She was never a strong person and her health grew steadily worse before dying in June 1861. Elizabeth was buried in Florence, Italy the place where the couple had made her home for many years.

Although Robert Browning (1812-89) is considered as one of our greatest Victorian romantics in the view of many people he was never as good as Elizabeth. A Londoner by birth (his father worked as a clerk in the Bank of England). None of his early works achieved much success possibly because they were not easy to understand so never sold widely. After his marriage and a lack of success with several works he practically gave up writing to take care of his sickly wife. After her death he again turned back to writing poetry publishing Dramatis Personae (1864) was a huge success which he built on with his greatest work The Ring and the Book (1868). None of his later books sold as well so he continued to live largely in the shadow of his late wife, Elizabeth, until his death in the cold winter of 1889. Although Robert died in Venice his body was returned to London for burial in Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey.