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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Italy

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning ran away to Italy after she secretly married Robert Browning, and she spent the rest of her life there. Her letters and Aurora Leigh reveal at the same time her romantic love for the country, the dramatic improvement in her health that ensued, probably linked to the liberation it represented for her, artistically as well as sexually. But they also speak of the difficult position in which she found herself as a published poet cut off from her roots and the literary resources and circles of London and the enduring sorrow of the daughter unforgiven by her father for her run away match. This tension produced the great Italian poems of her maturity but also a support of Napoleon III difficult to reconcile with her acumen.