Robert Browning

When Robert Browning first met the ailing Elizabeth Barrett in 1845 it must have seemed to him like something from a gothic novel. All but a prisoner to her strict, disciplinarian father, (who had forbidden all twelve of his children from marrying and disinherited any who disobeyed him), Elizabeth had recently published a book of poems that had made her one of the most lauded writers in the land. Robert, enamored by Elizabeth's poems sought out