Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, née Barrett, poetess, born at Carlton Hall, Durham; a woman of great natural abilities, which developed early; suffered from injury to her spine; went to Torquay for her health; witnessed the death by drowning of a brother, that gave her a shock the effect of which never left her; published in 1838 “The Seraphim,” and in 1844 “The Cry of the Children”; fell in with and married Robert Browning in 1846, who immediately took her abroad, settling in Florence; wrote in 1850 “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” in 1851 “Casa Guidi Windows,” and in 1856 “Aurora Leigh,” “a novel in verse,” and in 1860 “Poems before Congress”; ranks high, if not highest, among the poetesses of England; she took an interest all through life in public affairs; her work is marked by musical diction, sensibility, knowledge, and imagination, which no poetess has rivalled (1806‒1861).
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Brownie * Browning, Robert