Browning， Elizabeth Barrett （1806-1861）， English poet， political thinker， and feminist. She was born in Durham. Her highly regarded translation of Prometheus Bound， by Greek dramatist Aeschylus， appeared in 1833. In 1844 Barrett produced a volume of poems so highly regarded that in 1850， when William Wordsworth died， she was suggested as his successor as England's poet laureate.

　　In 1845 English poet Robert Browning began to write to Elizabeth to praise her poetry. Their correspondence developed into a romance that was bitterly opposed by her father. In 1846 the couple eloped， settling in Florence， Italy. Elizabeth's Sonnets from the Portuguese， dedicated to her husband and secretly written before her marriage， was published in 1850. Her longest and most ambitious work is the poem Aurora Leigh （1856）， in which she defends a woman's right to intellectual freedom and addresses the concerns of the female artist.