Abstract
In 1853, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, then living in Italy and internationally famous, wrote to her friend Isa Blagden that she dreaded the idea of becoming the subject of biography, of being “caught, stuck through with a pin, and beautifully preserved with other butterflies and beetles.” Over the 150 years since her death, Barrett Browning (EBB) has been repeatedly “stuck through with a pin” as biographers have reconstructed her and refashioned her according to various social, political, and ideological agendas. In the twenty-first century, biographers present a more capacious though not exclusively positive account of the poet and her writing. As this chapter shows, their important recovery work of Barrett Browning’s “fresh strange music” unveils a more candid, authentic portrait for modern readers.
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Way, E. (2017). “Stuck Through with a Pin, and Beautifully Preserved”: Curating the Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861). In: Ayres, B. (eds) Biographical Misrepresentations of British Women Writers. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56750-1_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56750-1_9
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