Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born in Durham, England, on March 6, 1806, the oldest of her parents' twelve children. Her father, Edward Boulton Barrett, was a sharp businessman who made a fortune from a number of sugar plantations in Jamaica. Barrett was very stern, and he ruled his home with absolute authority; his household law forbidding any of his children to marry caused a great deal of strife. Barrett Browning grew up in Hope End, her family's country home near the Malvern Hills. As a child, she wrote a number of poems: her earliest known poem was written when she was eight, as a birthday gift for her mother. For her fifteenth birthday, her father had one of her poems (The Battle of Marathon) privately printed. Her first brush with sorrow, however, occurred in 1828 when her mother, Mary, suddenly died. After the abolition of slavery in Jamaica, the...