Sonnets from the Portuguese

Written between 1845 and 1846 and published in 1850, a collection of forty-four love sonnets. The content and tone of the sonnets change as Elizabeth Barrett's relationship with Robert Browning relationship progresses. In the earlier sonnets she expresses her doubts, then as the relationship progresses she overcomes her anxieties, and they take a passionate tone. She did not want to publish the extremely personal collection but Robert Browning convinced her by saying they were perhaps the best sequence of English-written sonnets since Shakespeare's time. They disguised the title in hopes people would believe they were translations from foreign sonnets. The sonnets are some of the some of the most famous love poems of the Victorian Age, or any other. The opening line of Sonnet 43 [How do I love thee] has become so deeply embedded in our culture that even people who have never read the poem know it.