‘Sonnet 29’
•Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born in 1806 and was a thoughtful
and intelligent writer. She had a social conscience and was an
opponent to slavery and child labour.
•She married her husband, Robert Browning, who was 6 years
younger than her and was disowned by her father and cut off socially
by her siblings. Elizabeth and Robert, also a poet, moved to Italy
where they lived comfortably and were famous because of their
literary work.
•No female poet was held in higher esteem among cultured readers
in both the United States and England than Elizabeth Barrett
Browning during the nineteenth century. This is one of 44 sonnets in
a collection entitled Sonnets from the Portuguese, which was
published in 1850 but written some years earlier during Elizabeth
Barrett Browning’s courtship and subsequent marriage to Robert
Browning. The poems were originally personal and intended only for
Robert Browning’s eyes; subsequently, he persuaded Elizabeth
Barrett Browning to publish them.
