The Brownings’ Correspondence, Volume 2

Volume 2 encompasses a troubled and eventful period in EBB’s life. Her mother, Mary Moulton-Barrett, dies in 1828. Then comes news that Hope End must be sold. This volume marks the commencement of EBB’s lively series of letters with blind classical scholar Hugh Stuart Boyd who becomes her principal correspondent. Her poem “Kings” is published in The Times, and she begins keeping a diary in which she records her anxiety over the impending loss of Hope End. Two of RB’s early poems, “The First-Born of Egypt” and “The Dance of Death” appear in the supporting documentation, as does a letter from his father, Robert Browning, Sr., acknowledging his son’s withdrawal from London University.