Tuesday, February 14, 2006

For Valentine's Day, the Barrett-Brownings

On January 10, 1845, Robert Browning wrote to Elizabeth Barrett for the first time, after reading her volume of poetry, Poems. He was a little-known thirty-two-year-old poet and playwright, she was an internationally renowned poet, an invalid, and a thirty-nine-year-old spinster. "I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett -- I do, as I say, love these verses with all my heart," the letter said. Over the course of the next twenty months, they would write each other close to six hundred letters -- one of the greatest literary correspondences of all time.....read more on this page from the History Channel Online.

(The same site has other romantic links that are fun, too).

Whom do you think of as the most intensely romantic couple over the centuries, either in real life or in fiction? Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler? Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton? FDR and Lucy Mercer?

2 comments:

Geoff Sanderson said...

Well, the most intensely romantic couple I know about are one G. Sanderson - also a little-known poet - and Jill Sanderson - a little-known artist. They met at a ball on 15 September 1958, married on 5 December 1958, have three children and six grandchildren, and are still in love more than 47 years later. I don't know if it's going to last, but they're doing OK so far!

Pris said...

Now there's a romance to write about!! And I didn't realize you two married so quickly. Love at first sight! Wow. I'm impressed.