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Article: Two of world's greatest lovers - Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning - were descendants of blacks. (book sheds new light on couple)(includes book excerpt and interview with author)
- Article from:
- Ebony
- Article date:
- May 1, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Johnson Publishing Co. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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How do I love thee?" Elizabeth Barrett wrote to Robert Browning in her immortal Sonnets From the Portuguese, "Let me count the ways ...."
The ways apparently were not affected by the mixed bloodline of either poet. For, in Dared And Done: The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, an absorbing 382-page saga recently released by Alfred A. Knopf, the venerable New York publishing house, author Julia Markus offers convincing evidence that the two 19th-century English poets were part-Black descendants of wealthy Jamaican plantation owners.
This evidence comes from contemporary witnesses, frank acknowledgments by Barrett, and photographs that depict ...