New Statesman — Ideas

From the Archive: Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Measure of Constraint

In 1974 a lost diary of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, covering June 1831‑April 1832, was published, offering a vivid portrait of her constrained upbringing. The entries detail her rigorous self‑education in Latin and Greek, a passionate yet platonic attachment to the blind scholar Mr Boyd, and frequent bouts of “hysteria” linked to familial oppression. Browning’s reflections on politics, including a tongue‑in‑cheek proposal for universal suffrage, reveal early feminist consciousness that later surfaced in works like Aurora Leigh. The diary’s publication by the University of Ohio Press in 1967 (condensed here) underscores its lasting scholarly value.