Elizabeth Barrett had been prolific in poetry, translation and prose between 1841 and 1844.

The poem "The Cry of the Children", published in 1842 in Blackwoods, had condemned child labor and had helped bring about child-labor reforms by raising support for Lord Shaftesbury's Ten Hours Bill (1844).

At about the same time, she contributed critical prose pieces to Richard Henry Horne's A New Spirit of the Age.

In 1844 she published two volumes of Poems, which included "A Drama of Exile", "A Vision of Poets", and "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" and two substantial critical essays for 1842 issues of The Athenaeum.

Her prolific output will make her a rival to Tennyson as a candidate for poet laureate in 1850 on the death of Wordsworth.

Her 1844 volume Poems has made her one of the most popular writers in the country, and inspired Robert Browning to write to her.

He wrote, "I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett," praising their "fresh strange music, the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave thought."

Her cousin John Kenyon, Kenyon, a wealthy friend of the family and patron of the arts, arranges for Browning to meet Elizabeth on May 20, 1845, in her rooms, and so begins one of the most famous courtships in literature.

Elizabeth has already produced a large amount of work, but Browning will have a great influence on her subsequent writing, as will she on his: two of Barrett's most famous pieces are written after she meets Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese and Aurora Leigh.

Robert's Men and Women is also a product of this time.

Alfred Tennyson's early poetry, with its medievalism and powerful visual imagery, Is a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

In 1848, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt HAD made a list of "Immortals", artistic heroes whom they admired, especially from literature, notably including Keats and Tennyson, whose work WILL form subjects for Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood paintings.

The Lady of Shalott alone Is a subject for Rossetti, Hunt, John William Waterhouse (three versions), and Elizabeth Siddall.

ON September 27, 1855, Tennyson reads from his new book Maud and other poems, at a social gathering in the home of Robert and Elizabeth Browning in London; Dante Gabriel Rossetti makes a sketch of him doing so.

The English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning had begun taking morphine for pain relief at age fifteen (which she will takes for four decades until her death in 1861), although this seems not to impede her ability to write “poetical paragraphs”.

In 1857, the American writer Julia Ward Howe suggests that her genius is attributable to her use of the drug, provoking Robert Browning to enter into a heated literary argument defending his wife’s talent.

The Arts Club is founded by Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Frederic Leighton, and others in Hanover Square, London on June 12, 1863.

It remains today a meeting place for men and women involved in the creative arts either professionally or as patrons.

Leighton, born in Scarborough to Augusta Susan and Dr. Frederic Septimus Leighton, has two sisters including Alexandra, who is Robert Browning's biographer.

Educated at University College School, London, he then received his artistic training on the European continent, first from Eduard von Steinle and then from Giovanni Costa.

At age seventeen, in the summer of 1847, he met the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in Frankfurt and drew his portrait, in graphite and gouache on paper—the only known full-length study of Schopenhauer done from life.

When he was twenty-four he was in Florence; he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti, and painted the procession of the Cimabue Madonna through the Borgo Allegri.

From 1855 to 1859 he lived in Paris, where he met Ingres, Delacroix, Corot and Millet.

In 1860, he moved to London, where he associates with the Pre-Raphaelites.

He had designed Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb for Robert Browning in the English Cemetery, Florence in 1861.

The teenage acting sensation Ellen Terry and her sister Kate had had their portraits painted by the eminent artist George Frederic Watts in London during her engagement at the Haymarket Theatre.

His famous portraits of Terry include Choosing, in which she must select between earthly vanities, symbolized by showy but scent-less camellias, and nobler values symbolized by humble-looking but fragrant violets.

His other famous portraits of her include Ophelia and Watchman, and, together with her sister Kate, The Sisters.

Watts had soon proposed marriage to Terry.

Impressed with Watts's art and elegant lifestyle, she had wished to please her parents by making an advantageous marriage.

She had left the stage during the run of Our American Cousin, a hit comedy by Tom Taylor at the Haymarket, in which she had played Mary Meredith.

She and Watts had married on February 20, 1864 at St Barnabas, Kensington, seven days before her seventeenth birthday, when Watts was 46.

She is uncomfortable in the role of child bride, and Watts's circle of admirers, including Mrs. Prinsep, are not welcoming.

Terry and Watts separate after only ten months of marriage.

Nevertheless, during the marriage, Terry had made the acquaintance of a number of cultured and important and talented people, among them Browning, Tennyson, Gladstone, Disraeli and the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.

The poems of Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning express insight into Victorian unease.