《新编英汉口译教程》
·作者：崔永禄孙毅兵
.出版社：上海外语教育
·出版日期：2005年
·ISBN：7810953702
·条形码：9787810953702

An 1871 engraving of an 1859 photograph of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
(This work of art is in public domain.)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (March 6, 1806 – June 29, 1861) was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. She was the wife of poet Robert Browning, whom she married in secret due to objections by her father. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. Browning published many poems in her lifetime, and many more were published by her husband after her death. Her works contained early examples of feminist thought and have been reprinted in several volumes including The Norton Anthology of English Literature.

American poet Edgar Allan Poe was inspired by Barrett Browning's poem Lady Geraldine's Courtship and, specifically, borrowed the poem's meter for his poem The Raven. Poe had reviewed Barrett's work in the January 1845 issue of the Broadway Journal and said that "her poetic inspiration is the highest - we can conceive of nothing more august. Her sense of Art is pure in itself." In return, she praised The Raven and Poe dedicated his 1845 collection The Raven and Other Poems to her, referring to her as "the noblest of her sex". Her poetry greatly influenced Emily Dickinson who admired her as woman of achievement. Her popularity in the United States and Britain was further advanced by her stands against social injustice, including opposition to slavery in the United States, championing of the Italian national cause, protest against child labour.

In 1899 Lilian Whiting wrote a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning titled A study of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in which she describes the influence of Browing as "the most philisophical poet" and depicts her life as "a Gospel of applied Christianity. To Whiting, the term "art for art's sake" does not apply to the works of Browning, as she appears to write each of her poems with a distinct purpose because she writes of a more "honest vision". In the critical analysis, Whiting portray's Browning as a poet who uses knowledge of Classical literature with an "intuitive gift of spiritual divination". In Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Angela Leighton suggests that the portrayal of Browning as the "pious iconography of womanhood" detracts from the focus of Browning's achievements as a poet. Leighton cites the 1931 play by Even Besier titled The Barretts of Wimpole Street as evidence that 20th Century literary criticism of Browning's works suffered from the popularity of the poet rather than her poems.

Throughout the majority of the 20th Century, literary criticism of Browning's poetry remained sparse until her poems were discovered by the Feminist movement. Browning described herself as being inclined to reject several womens rights principles, suggesting in letters to Mary Russell Mitford and her husband, that she believed that there was an inferiority of intellect in women and that women. However, feminist critics have used Deconstructionist theories of Jaques Derrida and other philosophers to explain the feminist importance of Browning's literary voice. Leighton writes that because Browning participates in the literary world, where voice and diction is dominated by masculine superiority, she "is defined only in mysterious opposition to everything that distinguishes the male subject who writes..."

Elizabeth Browning
(This work of art is in public domain.)

Elizabeth Browning and his son Pen.
(This work of art is in public domain.)