Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born on March 6, 1806. The oldest of twelve children, eight boys and four girls, she wrote poetry from childhood, beginning at the age of six, or perhaps four. Elizabeth was educated at home by a tutor, and she read voraciously. At the age of fifteen, Ms. Barrett became ill with an unspecified illness which gave her great pain in the spine and the head. She took laudanum for the pain, which doctors could not heal, and the drug probably worsened her health in the long term. She also later had tuberculosis. At the age of thirty-nine, after a life of invalidism and poetry, Elizabeth Barrett met the poet Robert Browning. The two courted in secret, because of Elizabeth’s father’s strict and controlling views, and then they ran away to be married. Elizabeth’s father disinherited her, as he did all of his children who dared to get married.