The Brownings’ Correspondence, Volume 5

Volume 5 sees EBB’s continued residence at Torquay where she receives the spaniel Flush from Mary Russell Mitford in January 1841. Later in the year the poetess returns to 50 Wimpole Street, London. She develops new correspondences with artist Benjamin Robert Haydon and poetaster Thomas Westwood. RB’s circle of correspondents expands to include Charles Dickens and Thomas and Jane Carlyle. RB publishes Pippa Passes (1841) and King Victor and King Charles (1842), the first two numbers in the Bells and Pomegranates series. EBB, meanwhile, contributes to The Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer, Modernized (1841), and she publishes “Some Account of the Greek Christian Poets” in four parts in The Athenæum.