The Brownings’ Correspondence, Volume 4

Volume 4 includes RB’s itinerary written during his first trip to Italy. The Moulton-Barretts settle at 50 Wimpole Street, but EBB soon goes to Torquay for her health. In 1840 she is stricken by the deaths of her brothers: Sam in February and her favorite, Edward (“Bro”), a few months later in a drowning accident near Torquay. RB writes to many new correspondents: Alfred Domett, Anna Jameson, Walter Savage Landor, Harriet Martineau, and Edward Moxon. Both poets write to John Kenyon. Mary Russell Mitford displaces H.S. Boyd as EBB’s principal correspondent. The poetess writes to Richard Hengist Horne and the literary forger Thomas Powell for the first time. The Seraphim appears under her full name in 1838, and RB publishes Sordello in 1840.