I read yesterday that it was the birthday of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and I was idly wondering this morning why she called her book of love sonnets Sonnets from the Portuguese. As far as I knew she had nothing to do with Portugal nor are the sonnets translations from the Portuguese language as far as I know. So I just found out: “the ‘Portugese’ being her husband’s petname for dark-haired Elizabeth, but it could refer to the series of sonnets of the 16th-century Portuguese poet Luiz de Cames.” What a sweet nickname!

How’s this for a “homeschooled prodigy”?(from Victorian Web)
“Elizabeth, an accomplished child, had read a number of Shakespearian plays, parts of Pope’s Homeric translations, passages from Paradise Lost, and the histories of England, Greece, and Rome before the age of ten. She was self-taught in almost every respect. During her teen years she read the principal Greek and Latin authors and Dante’s Inferno–all texts in the original languages. Her voracious appetite for knowledge compelled her to learn enough Hebrew to read the Old Testament from beginning to end. Her enjoyment of the works and subject matter of Paine, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Wollstonecraft was later expressed by her concern for human rights in her own letters and poems. By the age of twelve she had written an “epic” poem consisting of four books of rhyming couplets. Barrett later referred to her first literary attempt as, “Pope’s Homer done over again, or rather undone.”

More EBB trivia:
The Barretts had 12 children, and Mr. Barrett forbade all those who grew to adulthood to marry. Elizabeth had to elope to marry Robert Browning.
Elizabeth began taking opium for pain relief at age 15, and she remained addicted to it for the rest of her life.
Robert and Elizabeth Browning lived in Italy for most of their marriage–which was apparently very happy and mutually beneficial. They had one child, a son.
The ‘epic poem” she wrote at age 12 was called The Battle of Marathon–a battle we just finished reading about in our homeschool with my nine year old and my six year old. I don’t see any signs of epic poetry spilling forth from either of them yet.
Romantically, Elizabeth Barrett Browning died in Italy “in her husband’s arms.”